Spanish Cities of the Golden Age [Reprint 2020 ed.] 9780520907942

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Spanish Cities of the Golden Age

For the cities and peoples of Spain

Spanish Cities of the Golden Age

The Views ofAnton van den Wyngaerde

Edited by Richard L.

UNIVERSITY

OF

CALIFORNIA

PRESS

BERKELEY

LOS

ANGELES

Kagati

LONDON

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 1989 by The Regents of the University of California The publisher acknowledges with gratitude the generous support given this book from the Art Book Fund of the Associates of the University of California Press, which is supported by a major gift from The Ahmanson Foundation. Publication of this book has been supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency. The publisher also gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the Spanish Ministry of Culture and the Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spam's Ministry of Culture and United States Universities for their generous support. Chapter III, "The Spanish Views of Anton van den Wyngaerde" by Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann, appeared in a slightly different version in Master Drawings 7, no. 4 (1969): 375-99. Grateful acknowledgment is made to Master Drawings Association, Inc , for permission to reprint the article Sources of the illustrations: Archivo General de Simancas, Archivo Oronoz (Madrid), A. C. Cooper Ltd. (London), Kungl. Bibhoteket (Stockholm), Lichtbildwerkstätte Alpenland (Vienna), Museo del Prado (Madrid), Patnmonio Nacional (Madrid), photographic services of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (Vienna), photographic services of the Victoria and Albert Museum (London).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Pubhcation Data Spanish cities of the golden age1 the views of Anton van den Wyngaerde / edited by Richard L. Kagan. p. cm Bibliography p. Includes mdex. ISBN 0-520-05610-8 (alk. paper) 1 Wyngaerde, Anton van den, d. 1571—Catalogs. 2. Cities and towns in art—Catalogs 3. Cities and towns—Spain—History— 16th century—Pictorial works—Catalogs 4 Philip II, King of Spain, 1527-1598—Art patronage I. Kagan, Richard L., 1943NC266.W96A4 1989 741 9493—dcl9 88-10664

Printed m Spain 9 8 7 6 5 4

3

2

1

Acknowledgments

A collaborative book is by definition a collective enterprise, enlisting the support o f numerous individuals and institutions. I am especially grateful, however, to Noelle Brown o f the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, to Dr. Walter Wieser, director, and Dr. Eva Irblich o f the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, and to Dr. C. M. Kauffmann, curator o f the Department o f Engravings and Drawings o f the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, for permission to reproduce the drawings o f Anton van den Wyngaerde from their collections. N o less essential was the help provided by Don Julio de la Guardia García, Consejero Gerente o f Spain's Patrimonio Nacional; Dr. Elisa Bermejo, o f the Instituto Diego Velazquez in Madrid; Dr. Armando Represa, former director o f the Archivo General de Simancas; Doña Elena de Santiago, director o f the Sección de Estampas of Madrid's Biblioteca Nacional; Don Gregorio de Andrés, archivist o f the Instituto de Valencia Don Juan (Madrid); the director and staff o f the Geography and Map Division o f the Library o f Congress; and the director and staff o f the Hispanic Division at this same institution. Others who provided valuable assistance include Dr. Agustín Bustamante, Don Fernando Collar de Cáceres, Dr. Fernando Doménech, Prof. John H. Elliott, Don Gregorio Marañón y Bertrán de Lis, Don Ignacio de Medina,

duke o f Segorbe, Prof. Geoffrey Parker, Prof. Loren Partridge, Dr. Alfonso Rodriguez G. de Ceballos, Dr. Magdalena Sanchez, and Dr. Marianna S. Simpson. I must also thank our two translators—Consuelo Luca de Tena, responsible for translations into Spanish, and Dr. Suzanne Stratton, for translations into English—and A m y Einsohn, our assiduous copy editor at the University o f California Press. I am personally indebted to The Johns Hopkins University and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for supporting a sabbatical year in Spain in 1982-83. O n behalf o f the University o f California Press, I would like to thank the Committee for Cooperation between the Spanish Ministry o f Culture and the Universities o f the United States for helping to defray expenses associated with the translation and publication o f this volume in English. Finally, it is a pleasure to thank Dr. Marilyn Perry, president o f the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, for her encouragement when this project was at an early stage; Sr. Santiago Saavedra, director o f Ediciones El Viso, for the patience to see it through to completion; and James Clark, director o f the University o f California Press, without whom an English edition would not have been possible.

Richard L. Kagan Baltimore, Maryland July 1987

Contents

Acknowledgments Preface 11 I.

Philip II as Art Collector and Patron

III.

1.

Madrid

no

Valsain

119

Philip II and the Geographers

3.

Segovia

Richard L. Kagan

4.

Toledo

14

40

The Spanish Views of Anton van den Wyngaerde

V.

123 130

ITINERARY II. The Journey to the Kingdom of Aragon 1.

Daroca

2.

Zaragoza

142

3.

Monzón

150

Cities of the Golden Age

4.

Lérida

Richard L. Kagan

5.

Cervera

6.

Montserrat

City Planning in Sixteenth-Century Spain

7.

Barcelona

Fernando Marias

8.

Tarragona

9.

Tortosa

Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann

IV.

ITINERARY I. In and Around the Court 2.

Jonathan Brown

II.

Catalogue. The Itineraries of Anton van den Wyngaerde

7

54

68

84

138

155 160 162 166 174

181

10.

Murviedro

11.

La Albufera and El Grao de Valencia

(Sagunto)

187

12.

Valencia

200

13.

Játiva

14.

Almansa

213

15.

Chinchilla

de Montearagón

211 214

194

ITINERARY III. The Expedition to North Africa 220

3.

Málaga

2.

Peñón de Vélez de ¡a Gomera

228

ITINERARY IV. The Journey to La Mancha 1.

Alcalá de Henares

2.

Guadalajara

3.

Cuenca

4.

Belmonte

233

238

243 253

ITINERARY VI. Two Journeys to Old Castile (1565, 1570) 1.

Avila

2.

Alba de Tornes

3.

Salamanca

4.

Zamora

5.

Toro

354 359

363 368

374

6.

Tordesillas

7.

Medina del Campo

8.

Valladolid

9.

Burgos

379 385

389

394

ITINERARY V. The Journey to Andalusia 1.

Córdoba

2.

Ubeda-Baeza

3.

Jaén

255

Appendix. Two Unidentified Towns 261

263

4.

Granada

5.

Alhama

6.

Antequera

1.

A Coastal Town

2.

Las Naves (?)

401 402

266 de Granada

276

Glossary 404 Bibliography 406 Contributors 411 Index 412

278

7.

The AJrican Coast

8.

Ojén

9.

Gibraltar

282

285 286

10.

Tarifa

11.

Zahara de los Atunes

12.

Cádiz

291 295

300

13.

Puerto de Santa María

14.

Jerez de la Frontera

308 315

15.

Sanlúcar de Barrameda

16.

Seville and Triana

17.

Itálica (Sevilla

18.

Carmona

323

327

la Vieja)

336

19.

Mérida

20.

Guadalupe

21.

Talavera de la Reina

339 341 347

335

Monzón (1563) Cervera (1563)

r*\¡¡ lamanca (1570)'

Valladolid del C a m p o (1565-1570) Valasain

Altía de Tormes

Lírida (1563)

, Segovia (1562)

¿í" Barcelona (1563)

Daroca (1563) Tortosa

(1570) MADRID

Alcala de Hernares (1565)

^ !

^ y « Cuenca (1565)

Eoledo (1563)

/ Bclmontc

Murvicdo (Sagunto) Valencia (1563) U.a Albufera and El Grao

Chinchilla de Montearagón (1563)

Córdoba (1567) Ubeda-Baeza

' s e v U l e

I

C a r m o n a

(156?)

Antequera

Sanlûcar de B a r r a m e d a X Jerez de la Frontera (1567) C Puerto de Santa Maria (1567) Cadiz (1567) Zahara

Granada (1567) Albania de Granada^

In and Around the Court Journey to the Kingdom of Aragon Expedition to North Africa Journey to La Mancha Journey to Andalusia

Gibraltai

T w o Journeys to Old Castile

Fig. 1. Itineraries o f Anton van den Wyngaerde. T h e dates in parentheses correspond to drawings dated by the artist.

Preface A n t o n van den Wyngaerde's Spanish views illustrate a w o r l d w e have lost. His drawings record Spain's cities in the mid-sixteenth century, one of the most glorious m o m e n t s in their history, and depict t h e m with a precision that can be described as almost photographic. For some, the publication of these drawings will have m u c h the same effect as the broadcast of the first i m ages of Jupiter transmitted by the spaceship Voyager in 1982. Earlier telescopic photographs had provided o b servers w i t h a general picture of the planet, but the n e w photographs showed an abundance of u n e x pected detail, offered close-ups of the planet's famous rings, and even revealed the existence of moons that had previously escaped the astronomer's eye. In similar fashion, Van den Wyngaerde's drawings bring us closer to the physical environment of Golden Age Spain. A n t o n van den Wyngaerde, k n o w n in Spanish as A n t o n i o de las Viñas, specialized in the cityscape, the depiction, in profile or obliquely f r o m above, of a city or t o w n . T h e aim of this art was topographical accuracy. In the sixteenth century, Van den Wyngaerde was unquestionably one of the most skilled practitioners of the genre. A Fleming, probably f r o m A n t w e r p , Van den Wyngaerde entered the service of Philip II in 1557, w h e n the king was in Flanders. In 1558 he journeyed to England, where he prepared drawings of various sites Philip had visited at the time of his marriage to M a r y Tudor in 1554. H e first came to Spain in 1561 or 1562, having been appointed one of Philip's pintores de cámara (court painters). T h e reasons that Philip invited Van den Wyngaerde to Spain remain uncertain, but the king apparently intended to m a k e various uses of the artist's skills. O n e of his tasks was to decorate the king's palaces w i t h t o pographical views. N o n e of these have survived, but in 1582 A r g o t e de Molina mentioned that El Pardo, the hunting lodge Philip constructed near Madrid, contained a corridor in which could be seen "painted on canvas, by the hand of A n t o n i o de las Viñas, a noted Flemish painter, the principal islands and land

of Zeeland, w i t h its towns, ports, rivers, banks, and dikes, as well as the sea, extending across to the great k i n g d o m of E n g l a n d . ' " In another gallery, accompanying a series of paintings illustrating the campaigns of Philip's father, Charles V, were views of London, Naples, Madrid, and Valladolid. A r g o t e de Molina does not indicate the n a m e of the artist responsible for these views, but they too can be attributed to Van den Wyngaerde. O u r artist w a s also at w o r k in the royal palace in Madrid, the Alcázar. In 1599 the German traveler Jacob Cuelvis reported that painted views of A m s t e r dam, Dordrecht, Ghent, Gravelines, and Lisbon, t o gether w i t h a n u m b e r of Spanish cities, were hanging in the entrance hall of this palace. H e also states that the decoration of the Great Hall in the Alcázar included views of thirteen Spanish cities and of Mexico City, R o m e , Genoa, and Milan. 2 Cuelvis does not attribute these views, but in 1623 a description of the Great Hall noted that "in this r o o m there are m a n y things to be seen in the w a y of painting, maps of m a n y cities of Spain, Italy, and Flanders, by the hand of J o r g e [sic] de las Viñas, w h o is foremost in this." 3

Argote de Molina (1582), 21.

Justi ([1889] 1953), 184-85; Orso (1986), 121, appendix F.

Cited in Orso (1986), appendix G.

Amezúa y Mayo (1949), 1:234-35.

Archivo Histórico Nacional, Consejos, libro 251e,

In addition to his w o r k decorating the king's palaces, Van den Wyngaerde is k n o w n to have painted stage scenery for a series of comedies performed at court on the D a y of the Kings in 1565. 4 However, the artist's main obligation was to produce a pictorial record of Spain's principal cities. Consequently, most of his time was spent traveling, and a royal order of 8 August 1570 instructing the t o w n s of Castile to provide a c c o m m o d a t i o n for Van den Wyngaerde and his assistants states that he was to "paint the description of s o m e of the m a j o r t o w n s . " 5 N o list of the towns Van den Wyngaerde was asked to "paint" has ever been found, but the artist's itineraries can be partially reconstructed f r o m his dated drawings (Fig. 1). T h e earliest of these, views of Segovia and the royal palace at Valsain, are b o t h dated 1562. H e visited the C r o w n of A r a g ó n the following year and then journeyed to Málaga in 1564, having been ordered by the king to record the siege of II

Haverkamp-Begemann's article is reprinted, with slight revisions, as Chapter 111 o f the present volume.

The views o f Alcalá de Henares are reproduced by Torres Balbas (1959); those o f Barcelona, by Galera i Monegal, Roca, and Tarrago (1982); o f Toledo, by J . Brown (1981); o f Zaragoza, by Fatás and Borras (1974).

the Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera on the North African coast. In 1565 he was back at court and journeyed to Medina del Campo and Burgos, apparently in the entourage of Queen Isabel de Valois. In 1567 he was again in Andalusia, and in 1570, shortly before his death, he visited the cities of Old Castile. During these travels Van den Wyngaerde produced sketches of individual monuments, made a variety of site plans and other preparatory drawings, and completed "finished" views of sixty-two cities and towns. As works of art, they attest to Van den Wyngaerde's considerable skills as a draftsman and topographer. As historical documents, they provide a unique visual record of Golden Age Spain. The historical importance of these views derives largely from Van den Wyngaerde's concern for topographical accuracy. A comparison with the betterknown views of Spanish cities by Joris Hoefnagel reproduced in the Civitates orbis terrarum, first published in 1572, reveals Van den Wyngaerde's attention to correct detail. Hoefnagel, a native of Antwerp, was in Spain from 1563 until 1567, and it is hard to imagine that the two Flemish artists did not cross paths. Their aims and methods were similar—both sought to record Spain's cities from nature—but the results are quite different. Hoefnagel was primarily a "scenographer, " treating his cityscapes as landscape compositions, generally subordinating detail to overall design, and often including in the foreground out-of-scale incidents illustrating local customs and costumes. Van den Wyngaerde, in contrast, was primarily a "topographer," interested in recording what he saw as faithfully as possible. His corresponding concern for detail allows us to reconstruct the appearance of many monuments that have since been destroyed or radically altered. Anton van den Wyngaerde died in Madrid on 7 May 1571, leaving behind a wife and family, including two children born in Spain. Shortly after the artist's death Philip II arranged to have his drawings sent to the Low Countries for engraving. Presumably, they were to be reproduced in some kind of atlas, but for reasons still not completely understood,

12

Preface

Philip's plans never materialized. Van den Wyngaerde's original drawings were subsequently dispersed, some finding their way to Prague and eventually to Vienna, others to London and Oxford, where they remained, virtually forgotten, until the end of the nineteenth century. In 1895 the great German scholar Carl Justi reproduced Van den Wyngaerde's view of the Alcazar of Madrid for the first time. This view and others of Madrid later appeared in the catalogue celebrating the 1926 exposition, the Antiguo Madrid, and then in Francisco Iniguez Almech's Casas reales y jardines de Felipe II (1952). However, the full extent of Van den Wyngaerde's artistic activities in Spain remained unknown until Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann, a specialist in Dutch and Flemish art, published "The Spanish Views of Anton van den Wyngaerde" (1969), an important article accompanied by a definitive catalogue.6 In recent years, Van den Wyngaerde's views of Alcala de Henares, Barcelona, Toledo, and Zaragoza have been reproduced separately, but those of other cities have remained unpublished and, for the most part, unknown.7 The present volume reproduces for the first time the complete corpus of Van den Wyngaerde's Spanish views. The accompanying essays by a historian, two art historians, and an architectural historian examine Van den Wyngaerde's achievement from an interdisciplinary perspective. Chapter I, by Jonathan Brown, sets the stage for Philip II's patronage of Van den Wyngaerde through an examination of the monarch's artistic taste, a subject neglected since the work of Carl Justi nearly a century ago. Chapter II discusses Philip II's interest in geography and topography and suggests some of the reasons that Van den Wyngaerde may have been brought to Spain. In Chapter III we arrive at the commission itself, as Egbert HaverkampBegemann examines the artist's technique and the history of his Spanish views. Chapter IV surveys the general state of Spain's cities at the time of Van den Wyngaerde's visits, and Chapter V, by the architectural historian Fernando Marias, offers an introduction to city planning practices in sixteenth-century

Spain. The catalogue is a collective enterprise. Professor Haverkamp-Begemann supplied the technical data, while the entries for the individual cities have been written by Fernando Marias and myself. Through this collaboration and the publication of Van den Wyngaerde's views, we hope to fulfill and to understand Philip II's plan for a grandiose visual record of the cities of his Spanish realms. Richard L. Kagan

I

Philip II as Art Collector and Patron Jonathan

j u s t i (1908), 2; 3 - 3 6 (Spanish ed., 2:1-46).

Brown

P h i l i p II has suffered the fate of those whose enemies have been their biographers. Bent on seeing his flaws and the errors of his ways, most of Philip's biographers, especially outside Spain, have drawn a vivid, malign portrait of the most powerful man of his epoch. A bigot and oppressor, a fanatic and murderer—these are only some of the terms applied to this austere, forbidding man. Even sympathetic writers, who have attempted to understand the king as a complex, uncertain person compelled to act by the powerful forces that shaped his temper and times, have had little success in altering the wellestablished image of the "black spider in his bleak cell at the Escorial." Yet all except the most grudging historians have made allowance for Philip's activities as an art patron. Perhaps only a few have admired his greatest achievement in this sphere of activity, the Escorial, but most have acknowledged the magnitude of his accomplishment in building and decorating this vast monument within a mere thirty years' time. As for his patronage of artists, this has always been granted as one of the king's saving graces. His passionate interest in the paintings of Titian and Bosch (an unlikely combination) is justifiably regarded as a positive entry on an otherwise negative balance-sheet. It might seem obvious that art collecting and statesmanship are parallel, not congruent, activities, best separated in assessing the man. But in this case, as in others, the obvious is not true, and for one reason. Both activities were manifestations of the same mind. Any attempt to plot the course of Philip as collector and patron must take account of the gradual but purposeful evolution of his complex career and character. This, it must be said, has never been done. Although there are many studies of separate aspects of his artistic patronage, the subject has rarely been viewed as a whole. The first global study, and still the best, was undertaken by Carl Justi, the great pioneer scholar of Spanish art. 1 Justi was a careful historian of the king and found much to admire in him as a Maecenas, although the Escorial was not to his taste. Some years later, Father José

Fernández Montaña wrote a tendentious, anecdotal account of Philip as a patron of the arts and sciences, a treatment redeemed from its excessive reliance on secondary sources only by the inclusion of several new documents. 2 A shorter apologetic sketch of Philip as patron appeared in 1931 in the foreword to Zarco Cuevas's book on Spanish painters at the Escorial, but added nothing to what was already known. 3 Some forty-five years would pass before the subject was again discussed, this time by Hugh Trevor-Roper in an essay that in most respects recapitulates the work of Justi. 4 Although Trevor-Roper's knowledge of Philip and his times enabled him to offer new insights, he simplifies Philip's interest in the visual arts by ignoring the vital changes in taste and outlook. These changes are vividly represented in two of the best-known portraits of the king—Titian's portrait of the young king in his armor, painted in about 1548 (Fig. 2), and Juan Pantoja de la Cruz's portrait of the aging king, ca. 1595 (Fig. 3). In Titian's portrait, the still-chivalrous world of Charles V is reflected in the handsome, worldly figure of his son; in Pantoja's portrait, the aged, ascetic king seems to embody his historical stereotype. Almost forty years separate these two images, forty years during which the king evolved as a man, as a ruler, and as a patron of the arts. Philip was born in Valladolid in 1527 and spent the first twenty-one years of his life in Castile, the heartland of the Spanish empire. 5 His education, although late to begin, was excellent. Learned tutors versed him well in ancient languages, geography, history, mathematics, and architecture. He also developed lasting interests in music, art, and book-collecting, and became adept in hunting and riding. The first evidence of his taste for the visual arts appeared around 1540, when a book of large sheets of plain paper was purchased "which His Highness has asked for so that he could paint in it." 6 Philip's practice of painting was still alive in 1557, when the Venetian ambassador noted that the king knew "something of sculpture and painting and likes to practice them to amuse himself." 7 This observation confirms Philip's practical experience in the arts he later patronized and also suggests that the young prince would have been an interested observer of the art around him. In Castile, where Philip spent his youth, these were times of artistic change. In architecture a late-Gothic style of Northern European origin tenaciously resisted the encroachments of the Plateresque, a decorative Renaissance style of Italian origins. Painting and sculpture, in contrast, were still firmly in the grasp of the late Middle Ages. Except for that eccentric genius, Alonso Berruguete, the painters and sculptors of Spain were well out of the Italian mainstream of advanced practice.

Fernández Montaña (1912).

Zarco Cuevas (1931), xi-xxx. The same can be sard of Montenegro y Soto (1927).

Trevor-Roper (1976), 47-83. Moran and Checa Cremades (1985) offer an excellent descriptrve study of Philip II as a collector of art and artifacts.

For Philip's biography I have relied principally on Parker (1978).

Cited by Parker (1978), 8-9. 7

Cited by Justi (1908), 2:32.

15

Fig. 2. Titian, Philip II, in his youth. Madrid, Prado Museum.

Fig. 3. Pantoja de la Cruz, Philip II, in old age. El Escorial.

The provincialism of Spanish art probably would not have been evident to young Philip until his momentous voyage to Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands, undertaken between 1548 and 1551.8 Without doubt, Philip's travels—the sights he saw and the people he met—transformed his taste and understanding of the visual arts and launched him on his career as a great patron. Philip's Italian itinerary did not include Venice, Florence, or Rome, the greatest centers of art and culture. But he did visit Genoa, Milan, and Mantua, where he could have seen the works of such giants of the Renaissance as Alberti, Bramante, Leonardo, Mantegna, and Giulio Romano. And it was in Milan that Philip first made contact with two artists who were to become centerpieces of his patronage—Titian and Leone Leoni. Heading north, and with Leoni in his retinue, Philip stopped in Trent, Innsbruck, Munich, and Heidelberg, finally arriving in Brussels on 1 April 1549, where he was reunited with his father, the Emperor Charles V. During the remainder of the year, the two men made a triumphal progress through the Netherlands, which culminated in the memorable spectacle at Binche, at the palace of Mary of Hungary, Philip's aunt. 9 The stay in Flanders made no less an impression on the young prince than had Italy. There are no eyewitness records of Philip's careful study of Flemish art, but later events leave no doubt of the profound impression made by the architecture and painting of his northern territory. From Flanders, Philip accompanied his father to Augsburg (November 1550), where he again met Titian, who had been summoned by the Emperor to execute portraits of the royal family. One of these portraits of Philip (perhaps a copy of that shown here as Fig. 2) was intended for Mary of Hungary and inspired the oft-quoted remark by the prince, which shows his taste for Titian's broad manner of painting was still in a formative stage: "The haste with which he did my portrait can easily be seen, and if there had been more time I would have had him do it again." 10 Despite this initial reservation, Philip soon became a devoted admirer of the great Venetian. The effects of Philip's journey through his future realms were nothing less than overwhelming. Within the time of a few years and the space of a few countries, the prince's taste became internationalized. Furthermore, his viewing of the refined, sophisticated art of Italy and Flanders must have made apparent to him that his home country had failed to keep pace with his other European lands. It seems to have been then that Philip became determined to use his power, wealth, and patronage to effect a deliberate and far-reaching transformation in the art of Spain.

The fundamental account of this trip is by Philip's tutor, Juan Cristobal Calvete de Estrella ([1562] 1930).

For details of the festival at Binche, see Van der Put (1939-1940).

16 May 1551, Philip to Mary of Hungary. For the text of the letter, see Tizitmo e la Carte ii Spagtu (1975), 38.

Philip II as Art Collector and

Patron

Fig. 4. Titian, St. Margaret. El Escorial, New Museums.

Fot an introduction to Charles V as p a t r o n and collector, see T r e v o r - R o p e r (1976), 11-45; o n M a r y of H u n g a r y , see D u v e r g e r (1972).

Tiziano e la Corti di Spagna (1975), 43.

23 M a r c h 1553, Titian to Philip; Tiziano e la Corte di Spagna (1975), 34.

For the Poesie, see Wethey (1975), 71-84; H o p e (1980), 125-37—part of a perceptive discussion of the relationship between Titian and Philip II, p p . 109-66; and Palluchini (1977).

H y m a n s (1910), 48.

18

Jonathan

Brown

T h e first signs of this "revolution f r o m above" begin to be evident in the short period between the return f r o m the first trip to Flanders (1551) and the start of his second trip to northern Europe (1554). At some point after his critical remark about Titian, the prince revised his opinion and came to the conclusion that the painter was indeed a great artist. O f course, the fact that his revered father and respected aunt had long patronized Titian would have played a part in Philip's reassessment of his talents. 11 But Philip's admiration for the painter was stimulated by more than filial piety. In a letter f r o m the prince to the painter, dated 12 December 1552, he enthusiastically acknowledges the receipt of t w o paintings, probably St. Margaret (Fig. 4) and Venus and Adonis (Fig. 6). "You have given us much pleasure by sending them, for which w e give you many thanks," began the prince. And then, in another phrase, he opened wide the door to the future and famous relationship between himself and Titian: "And if there is some favor or grace you require, you k n o w the goodwill I have for you." 1 2 Titian, ever the opportunist, saw his chance and took it. His response to the prince's generous, if unspecified, offer blends touching j o y and undisguised flattery: "Your letter of 12 December was so gracious and favorable that, although I am an old man, I am returned to youth, so that Your H i g h ness has worked in m e a miracle. But it is no wonder, given the greatness of Your Highness and all that you do, for which I do so desire to serve. For this alone, I hold dear to the life already dedicated and consecrated to Your H i g h By 1562, Titian had sent to Spain a series of paintings, including the Poesie, the suite of mythological subjects n o w regarded as among the artist's masterpieces (Fig. 5). 14 Between 1552 and 1562, Philip and Titian exchanged n u merous letters, which are marked on Philip's side by unfailing courtesy toward the artist and unalloyed admiration for his creations. T h e letters also chronicle Philip's exceptionally generous payments to Titian and, surprisingly, the apparent lack of specific instructions about the subjects the artist was to paint. In a magnificent and perhaps unprecedented act of patronage, Philip bestowed u p o n Titian both wealth and artistic freedom. Such unconditional support for a great artist marks Philip as the most princely of princely patrons. T h e other painter w h o commanded Philip's attention during the 1550s was Antonis Mor, the Flemish portraitist. M o r came to Philip's attention during the first trip to Flanders, when he painted a portrait of the prince, the best version of which is in the collection of Earl Spencer, Althorp. 1 5 Mor's fastidious, finished technique, so different f r o m the open, sketchy manner of

Fig. 5. Titian, Danae. Madrid, Prado Museum.

Fig. 6. Titian, Venus and Adonis. Madrid, Prado Museum.

Titian, seems to have appealed greatly to the prince, who made him the de facto portraitist of his court. Mor was twice in Spain, the first time in 1552. In 1554 he went to England, where he painted his best-known picture, a portrait of Mary Tudor (Fig. 7), whom Philip married on 24 July of that year. Despite the apparent objectivity, the portrait must have greatly improved the appearance of the queen, if we are to believe the pitiless comment by Ruy Gomez: "Not for flesh was this marriage made." 16 Mor accompanied the king back to Spain in 1559 and remained, according to Van Mander, his early biographer, on close terms with the monarch. In 1560 the painter returned for good to the North, leaving behind several of his direct, unblinking portraits, many of which were installed in a gallery of Habsburg family portraits in the Pardo. During this decade of discovery, Philip also began to be active as a patron of architecture, one of his great, lifelong passions. Philip's interest in the art of building can be traced to as early as 1545, when the treatises of Serlio and Vitruvius were bought for his library. 17 But the first evidence of his personal style of patronage manifested itself after his return from Italy and Flanders. In Italy, Philip had seen the subtle but powerful classicizing style of Renaissance architecture and the heights of magnificence it could achieve. In the North, he admired the well-ordered world of the Flemish garden. These les-

Cited by Sánchez Cantón (1916), 34.

"Libranzas relativas al pago de los libros" (1875), 267-68. Philip

II as Art Collector

and Patron

19

See Parker (1978), 38-40.

For the Alcázar of Toledo, see Martin González (1960) and Marias (1983-84), 1:243-46, 255-58. 20

Cited by Martín González (1960), 277.

Cited in the fundamental study by Iñiguez Almech (1952), 166. 20

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sons learned abroad he quickly applied upon his return to Spain. Orders went out to remake the gardens of the royal seats in the Flemish style; in other words, to devote the gardens to ornamental horticulture rather than functional agriculture. 18 In the realm of monumental architecture, the prince again made his presence felt, as seen in his intervention in the design of the staircase of the Alcázar in Toledo. During his absence, the reconstruction of the Alcázar had been completed except for the southern flank, where progress had come to a halt because of a dispute over the design of the principal staircase.19 The royal architect, Alonso de Covarrubias, wished to install a monumental staircase the scale of which necessitated a substantial reduction in the living space in this quarter of the palace. The alternative plan, proposed by Luis de Vega, subordinated the grandiose possibilities of the staircase to functional requirements. Philip, as the self-appointed arbiter of the dispute, first chose function over form. But after visiting the site and hearing the persuasive arguments of Francisco de Villalpando, he issued a cédula, dated 15 October 1553, which resolved the matter in favor of Covarrubias. 20 In 1554, Philip again left Spain for a prolonged trip that took him to England and again to Flanders. The trip to England was made for the purpose of contracting matrimony with Mary Tudor, a political match that failed in every way. Two years later, he witnessed the abdication of his father and his own ascent to power as ruler of the Netherlands and king of Spain. Philip returned to Spain in 1559, now master of his own house and architect of his own fate. For all its political importance, the second trip beyond Spanish frontiers also served to complete the king's artistic education, especially in architecture. To his observations of buildings in Italy, Germany, and Flanders he had now been able to add those of England. Only the structures of his rival, the king of France, escaped his attention, and this deficiency was remedied by sending one of his architects, Gaspar de Vega, on a reconnaissance trip through the Ile-de-France. On 16 May 1556, Vega submitted a summary report of his impressions of the Louvre, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, the Chateau de Madrid, and Fontainebleau. Of the last he wrote dismissively, "It did not seem to me as great a thing as it is reputed to be. " 21 Also at this time Philip became acquainted with Anton van den Wyngaerde, the preeminent topographical draftsman of the age. The king invited the artist to come to Spain, an offer consistent with this expansive period of royal patronage, when contemporary ideas and artists were being welcomed in the king's Iberian realms. Van den Wyngaerde, like many an artist, must

have been flattered by the attention and enticed by the rewards available to those who won the favor of this liberal patron. If for Philip the decade of the 1550s was a time for exploring new artistic horizons, the 1560s was a time for consolidating the lessons learned from study abroad. He began systematically to revamp the art of his Spanish realms, first by recruiting artists trained in Italy to serve as the leading figures in the royal workshops. While still in Flanders, Philip appointed Juan Bautista de Toledo as his principal architect (15 July 1559). 22 Although Spanish, Toledo had worked long years in Italy, as Michelangelo's assistant at St. Peter's from 1546 to 1548 and then as architect to the Viceroy of Naples. Toledo was put in charge of the royal works and also asked to provide designs for the Escorial. The extent of Toledo's responsibility for the plans of the Escorial is still a matter of debate, but whatever it may have been, his appointment symbolizes the ascendancy of the Italianate at Philip's

O n Juan Bautista de Toledo and his career, see Kubler (1982) and Rivera (1984).

On Gaspar Becerra, see Martin González (1969).

Pacheco ([1649] 1956), 6 - 7 .

Fig. 7. Antonio Moro, Mary Madrid, Prado Museum.

Tudor.

In the field of painting, Philip made a comparable selection, Gaspar Becerra, who was recommended by the architect Toledo. 23 Becerra, a native o f Baeza, had spent time in Rome during the 1540s and was an assistant to Vasari during the execution of the Sala dei Centi Giorni in the Cancellería. His appointment as pintor del rey is dated 26 November 1562, following which he was put to work on the execution of the frescoes in the Alcázar o f Madrid, where he collaborated with another of Philip's imported artists, the Genoese Giovanni Battista Castello, and in the Palace of El Pardo. Little remains of his work for the king, except for the Perseus frescoes in the Pardo, which show him to have been the master of the Michelangelesque style prevalent in Rome during the 1540s. According to Francisco Pacheco, Becerra became known for his slow pace of work, which elicited a characteristically laconic but devastating critique from the king. 24 One day Philip visited the Pardo to see what Becerra had accomplished. The artist proudly pointed to the figure of Mercury flying through the air, obviously intending to impress the king with his artistry. Philip regarded the figure for a moment, then turned to the painter and said: "Is this all you have done?" On hearing this remark, Pacheco reports, Becerra "became very sad." In the years ahead, Philip would prove to be a demanding, even unforgiving patron o f painters. However, he never waPhilip II as Art Collector and Patron

21

28 July 1563, Titian to Philip II, Tiziano e la Cone ü Spagna (1975), 196-97

vered in his devotion to the favorite artist of his youth, Titian. In July 1563 Titian wrote to the king astutely proposing to supply a devotional picture, a large painting of the Last Supper, as a kind of counterweight to the Poesie.25 Titian's choice of subject seems to prefigure the changes to come in Philip's taste. Although Titian would provide at least two more paintings of antique themes in the years ahead (Tarquin and Lucretia, now at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, and Venus at Her Mirror, at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), devotional pictures would eventually predominate over secular subjects as the king, buffeted by heresy and rebellion in his northern lands and threatened to the east by the infidel Turk, began to concentrate his attention and resources on the preservation of his Catholic monarchy. During 1564 Philip received frequent progress reports on the Last Supper, which was completed in October. After a considerable delay in transport, the picture arrived in Spain in 1566 and was sent to the Escorial, whereupon the king, rather shockingly and for reasons unknown, ordered it to be cut down and repainted (Fig. 8), an unfortunate mutilation of an important work by a great master.

Fig. 8 Titian, Last Supper New Museums

22

Jonathan Brown

El EsconaJ.,

In 1564 Philip sent to Venice the first known order for Titian to paint a specific subject, the Martyrdom of St. Lawrence.26 The picture was destined for the main altar of the church of the Escoriai and was a remarkable request in that construction had started only in the preceding year. The canvas arrived in Madrid in the summer of 1568 and was sent to the Escoriai to await the completion of the work. The history of the Escoriai is still being written, but the principal events are reasonably well documented.27 After some years of preliminary planning, the foundation stone was laid on 23 April 1563. Construction began in the south flank of the huge site, directed, albeit somewhat erratically, by Juan Bautista de Toledo until his death in 1567. Gradually his authority devolved on Juan de Herrera. B y June 1571, with the completion of the south flank, part of the building could be occupied by the Hieronymite friars and also by the king and courtiers. Three years later, work began on the basilica, which was finished in 1583, and by August 1585 the royal family was able to move into permanent quarters. In the following year, on 30 August 1586, the Escoriai was dedicated, although the northern third of the building was still under construction. Additional building and decoration went on virtually to the end of Philip's life, but in practical terms the construction of the monastery-palace, one of the largest structures of Renaissance Europe, was completed in the space of twenty-three years. The rapid pace of construction, in and of itself an amazing feat, could have been accomplished only by an extraordinary concentration of financial and human resources. It also required the constant attention of the king, which is recorded everywhere in the copious documentation of the project. Philip's decision to expend his money and his time on the Escoriai was initially motivated, as is well known, by filial piety. Philip had been charged by his father with providing a suitable burial place for his earthly remains. Although Philip first commissioned the building to commemorate the victory over the French at Saint Quentin (10 August 1557), this rather limited aim was eventually superseded by the notion of a dynastic monument. 28 Stated in simplest terms, a great ruler and a great dynasty required a monument of appropriate grandeur. At the same time, it appears that Philip became totally enthralled by the process of designing and building this mammoth structure. Here was an arena for artistic engagement worthy of an architectural amateur who also was ruler of a global empire. Right from the first, Philip took close and personal charge of every aspect of the work, persistently shaping it into the object o f his desires.

26

31 August 1564, Philip to Garcia Hernández; Tiziano e la Corte di Spagna (1975), 113. 27

See Kubler (1982), which is the source o f information for the present account. 28

See the document cited by Kubler (1982), 12-13.

Philip

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Collector

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23

M u c h has been written about the authorship of the design of the Escorial, as scholars have attempted to adjudicate between the competing claims of several architects. This discussion ultimately misses the point, h o w e v e r , because the building, in concept, was designed b y the king himself. O r , m o r e precisely, the building was designed by the same conciliar process used by Philip to govern his realms. Architects, b o t h in Spain and Italy, w o u l d receive instructions f r o m the king and then present consultas in the f o r m of plans and drawings. Philip w o u l d approve or reject the plans, or send t h e m back w i t h questions for clarification and further refinement. But, in the end, everything had to be approved b y h i m and so signaled in his hand.

see Kubier (1982), 47-53. 24

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In certain respects, the practice c o n f o r m e d to the time-honored pattern of relationships between an artist and a p o w e r f u l patron. Philip's innovation lay in the systematization, or bureaucratization, of this traditionally unstructured relationship, w h i c h concentrated all the p o w e r to make decisions in his hands. As an amateur of architecture, Philip k n e w w h a t he liked and disliked w h e n he saw it. B u t he had neither the training nor the desire to m a k e d r a w ings; rather, these were to be m a d e b y architects and revised until at last they c o n f o r m e d to the royal wishes. B u t this procedure was easier said than done because Philip, in architecture as in statecraft, f o u n d it hard to m a k e decisions, even w h e n the principal aims of policy were clear. T h e best example of the process is f o u n d in the design of the basilica of the Escorial. 2 9 T h e first plan was provided in 1561-1562 by J u a n Bautista de Toledo, and almost at once was s h o w n to the Italian military engineer, Francesco Paciotto, w h o roundly criticized several of the principal features (July 1562). A t Paciotto's suggestion, n e w plans for the Escorial w e r e assembled in Italy, and in 1567 they were sent along w i t h others done in Spain to the Accademia dell'Arte del Disegno in Florence for review b y a j u r y consisting of B a r t o l o m m e o A m m a n a t i , Angelo Bronzino, Francesco da Sangallo, Vincenzo Danti, and Zenobia Lastricati. T h e j u r y in turn sent the projects to G i a c o m o Vignola in R o m e , w h o was charged w i t h synthesizing t h e m . O n 7 July 1572, Vignola's plans were s h o w n to P o p e G r e g o r y XIII and then f o r w a r d e d to Spain. T h e loss of the drawings makes it impossible to determine their contribution to the plan finally approved b y the king, alt h o u g h it has been suggested that they led h i m to accept a design substantially resembling the one suggested by Paciotto in 1562. In later years, the process was further revised, again in a m a n n e r consistent w i t h Philip's style of g o v e r n m e n t . T h e emergence of J u a n de Herrera as the royal architect parallels the king's reliance on his secretaries, m e n such as M a t e o Vazquez, w h o , on a m u c h larger scale, organized the flow of state

business. As an experienced courtier as well as architect and mathematician, Herrera was the ideal person to translate the king's wishes into stone and mortar. If this description of the king's architectural patronage is accurate, we are led to the inevitable conclusion that the plain style of the Escoriai, the estilo desornamentado, was the creation of Philip himself, expressed through the agency of his architects. This style was based in part on the rejection of existing Castilian models in favor of Italian ones. Nevertheless, the Renaissance classical style of Italy was drastically revised to eliminate all that was ornamental, capricious, or sensuous. Only elements of scale, mass, and proportions were retained and then arbitrarily manipulated to produce the effect of austere grandeur desired by the king. The unprecedented combination of these classical features with the slate-roofed towers of Flanders is also the unmistakable result of Philip's personal taste. While it may be tempting to interpret the stern style of the Escoriai as a total metaphor for Philip II and his reign, any such evaluation would rest on fallacious assumptions derived either f r o m facile psychobiography or crude historical generalization. The truth of the matter is that the basic design of the Escoriai, except for the basilica, was drafted by Juan Bautista de Toledo and therefore was established between 1561 and 1567, the year of his death. During this decade of the 1560s Philip lived the life of a Renaissance prince, if somewhat less ostentatiously, and these were his happiest years. His reign had begun auspiciously with victory over the French, sealed by the Treaty of CateauCambrésis (1559). In 1560 he married Isabel de Valois, w h o m he dearly loved and whose youthful spirit affected the court. And, despite the tenuous situation in the Lowlands, peace prevailed in the North; the devastating wars of religion were still just over the horizon. All this was soon to change; the queen died in 1568, just as the Netherlands and the Granadine Moriscos exploded, into rebellion. In the years ahead, Philip's rule would become more difficult and his style of governance more harsh. But one should not interpret the Escoriai, a creation of the 1560s, f r o m the vantage point of the 1580s and 1590s. Furthermore, it is equally erroneous to judge the Escoriai as if it were an ordinary Renaissance palace or religious building. The letter of foundation and endowment written by the king on 22 April 1567 makes clear that the Escoriai was to be a dynastic t o m b and memorial. This special purpose, which is unique for its time, precludes comparisons of the Escoriai to contemporary buildings such as the Palace of Fontainebleau or the Villa Farnese at Caprarola. 3 0 Rather, one has to turn back the pages of history to m o n u -

30

For the letter of endowment see Kubler (1982), 47-53; Bury (1985) discusses contemporary comparisons of the Escortai to famous monuments of Egyptian and Greco-Roman antiquity. Philip II as Art Collector and Patron

2 S

31

See Zarco Cuevas (1930-1931). 32

Cited by Sentenach y Cabanas (1907), 41-42. Sentenach's transcription gives the date both as 1576 and 4 July 1566, but 1566 must be a typographical error because the document refers to the basilica (capilla mayor), the construction of which was not begun until 1574. 26

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ments such as the great pyramids of O l d Kingdom Egypt to find buildings of comparable purpose. Viewed f r o m this perspective, the Escoriai can be understood as an original creation inspired by unusual circumstances and an extraordinary man, and not as the product of religious fanaticism and bigotry. O n e other small but persistent misunderstanding should also be corrected. The Escoriai was never intended or used as the king's principal residence. Madrid, to which the court had moved in 1561, was always the seat of government, while the Escoriai was visited only on certain occasions. After 1575 Philip spent Holy Week at the site whenever possible and was also in residence for longer periods to celebrate church holidays during the temperate months. But he usually avoided the Escoriai during the heat of the summer for fear of malaria, which was thought to be prevalent in the area, and seld o m stayed for more than a few weeks at a time, regardless of season. Thus, the image of Philip ruling the world f r o m a monastic cell in the Escoriai should be dismissed as fiction. Yet this is not to say that the Escoriai is devoid of significance for understanding what Trevor-Roper has called the Anti-Reformation, that dreadful period of European history when Philip led a crusade against the heretic and infidel and attempted to impose a Catholic peace on Habsburg lands. H o w ever, this phase of Philip's reign is reflected not in the architecture but rather in the decoration of the Escoriai. The task of covering the walls of this enormous building with religious paintings and providing it with a full complement of liturgical objects was almost unimaginably large. Philip addressed the problem of decoration in t w o ways: first, by donating hundreds of pictures f r o m his personal collection to the monastery, and second, by commissioning artists for frescoes and altarpieces. By analyzing his choice of pictures and artists, we can begin to understand the development of his taste. During his lifetime Philip donated over a thousand pictures to the Escoriai, exclusive of the ones commissioned for specific sites within the c o m plex. These donations, or entregas, were made on seven occasions between 1571 and 1598 (an eighth took the form of a bequest delivered in 1611). 31 At least one entrega was accompanied by specific instructions concerning the installation, evidence once again of the king's desire to maintain strict control over the project. In a fascinating document dated 4 July 1576, the king gave orders for the placement of several works, including Roger van der Weyden's Descent from the Cross (Fig. 9), Patinir's St. Christopher, and Titian's Gloria and Noli me tangere.32 As on an earlier occasion, Philip was prepared to tailor a painting by Titian to suit his needs: "The Noli me tangere by Titian

which we saw today should be cut by El M u d o [Juan Fernández Navarrete] as he sees fit and a small frame put around it." And not in vain was the king called El Prudente: "I order that you keep all the cases in which these pictures came f r o m Madrid, so that they can be used again to move them when the monastery is finished." T h e lists of the entregas are valuable indices of Philip's achievements as a collector. The first point of significance to emerge f r o m their study is the huge number of pictures. Although some of the works had been inherited, most appear to have been acquired by Philip himself, a formidable record of

Philip II as Art Collector and Patron

27

33

For the contents of the Alcazar of Madrid, see Inventories reales (1956-1959). For Philip's activities as an art collector, see J. Brown (1986). 34

Trevor-Roper (1976), 11-45; Duverger (1972). 35

For Philip's collection of paintings by Bosch, seejusti (1908), 2:61-93; Friedlander (1969); Bermejo (1982), 2:109-35; Steppe (1985), 271-72. in 1570, Philip acquired six paintings from the heirs of his courtier, Felipe de Guevara; see Allende-Salazar (1925). Nine paintings attributed to Bosch were sent to the Escorial between 1571 and 1574 and five more in 1593; see Zarco Cuevas (1930-1931), 656-58, nos. 837-45, and nos. 846-50. 36

However, Philip continued to collect works by Titian when they became available. See, for example, Delaforce (1982). For an interesting discussion of Philip's taste, see Cloulas-Brousseau (1976). 28

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collecting. (He also left a sizable collection in the Alcazar of Madrid and a somewhat smaller but still important group of paintings in the Pardo. 33 ) A large n u m b e r of these pictures unfortunately are listed without attribution. But among the ascribed works, t w o groups stand out for their quality and importance: the twenty-five to thirty paintings by Titian and the paintings b y the Flemish primitives, especially the fifteen to twenty canvases of Bosch. Philip's taste for Flemish fifteenth-century and Venetian sixteenth-century painting was to a large extent shaped by the example of his illustrious forebears. Isabella the Catholic, his great-grandmother, had been an avid collector of Flemish painting. And both Charles V and Mary of Hungary had collected important works by Titian and the Flemish masters. 34 Nevertheless, one aspect of Philip's taste has always seemed puzzling—his admiration for the t w o painters most strongly represented in his collection—Titian and Bosch. In particular, Titian's Poesie and Bosch's bizarre religious paintings (Figs. 10 and 11) f o r m a strange juxtaposition of unbridled pagan sensuality and apocalyptic Christian moralizing. T h e first, and simplest, explanation for this seemingly contradictory characteristic of Philip's taste is that he favored different artists for different purposes, an idea that is corroborated by study of the works he explicitly commissioned for his use. Then, of course, he had wide-ranging tastes in art and a real eye for quality. In the sixteenth century, as today, it was possible for most connoisseurs (Michelangelo is the most famous exception) to appreciate the best of Flemish and the best of Italian painting, even while recognizing the profound differences between them. This said, w e can still discern an underlying pattern to Philip's interest in these t w o great painters. The commission and execution of the Poesie belong to the first phase of Philip's career as a collector and patron, while the passion for collecting works by Bosch largely falls into the later phase. The final picture in the Poesie series was completed in 1562 and sent to Spain, prophetically, with the painting Agony in the Garden. Thereafter, for the last fifteen years of his life, Titian principally painted religious works for the king. T h o u g h the record of acquisitions is incomplete, there is little evidence to indicate that m a n y of the works of Bosch were acquired, except by inheritance, before 1570. 35 If this is so, then the king's ownership of the Poesie and the Garden of Delights is more understandable. It is probably unlikely that he would have commissioned the Poesie after 1570, while the continued interest in Bosch is consistent with the development of his character and taste. 36 It is also interesting to note that Philip did not find another Venetian painter to replace Titian, although he was certainly acquainted with the w o r k of Veronese and Tintoretto, both worthy successors to the great mas-

Fig. 10. H i e r o n y m u s Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights. Madrid, P r a d o M u s e u m .

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29

Fig. 11. H i e r o n y m u s Bosch, Adoration of the Magi. Madrid, P r a d o M u s é u m .

j7

zarco cuevas (1932), 54. 30

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ter. In 1583 Philip obtained a superb work from each for the main altar of the church of the Escorial. 37 But neither artist was offered the opportunity to supply pictures of his own choice for the king, as Titian had done. Philip did not dislike their work; in fact, he sought to bring Tintoretto to the Escorial to paint the pictures for the main altarpiece. But the king wanted to keep close watch over his artists to ensure that they faithfully executed his ideas for the decoration. After Tintoretto refused the invitation, he heard no more from the court. The pictures collected by the king thus tell us less about the development of his taste than the paintings commissioned expressly for the site. After about 1570, Philip's interest in painting shifted from collecting to the commissioning of works for the decoration of the church and monastery. This monumental task transpired against the background of Philip's endless war

with the Protestant rebels of his northern domains, a struggle that left its mark on the king and his major artistic project, which was destined to become a visual encyclopedia of orthodox Counter-Reformation Cathohcism. But the war against heresy was only one of the factors that shaped the king's plans for the Escorial. The other was its function as a dynastic tomb. Here would rest forever the remains of Philip, his ancestors, and his successors while the community of friars prayed for the salvation of their souls. This conjunction of personal and universal history played out against a titanic struggle between heresy and orthodoxy determined the peculiar history of the decoration of the Escorial. The emphasis on doctrinal accuracy was promoted above all other concerns. Beauty was eschewed in favor of legibility, ideas were given precedence over forms. Working under the everwatchful eye of the king, t w o generations of painters sought the favor of this pious, stubborn m a n w h o was convinced that he practiced the true faith and knew h o w it should be represented in works of art. T h e study of one important element in the decoration of the Escorial will suffice to demonstrate h o w the king personally monitored and directed the work. Philip began to think about the adornment of the high altar of the basilica shortly after the start of construction in 1563. 38 In 1564 Titian was commissioned to paint the Martyrdom of St. Lawrence (Fig. 12) as the centerpiece for the projected altar. The picture arrived at the Escorial in 1568 and was installed in the provisional church, there to await the completion of the basilica, which was not finished until 1583. In the meantime, the architectural framework of the altar was commissioned, to be built after Herrera's design with sculpture by Leone Leoni, w h o had met the king many years earlier in Italy. As Philip saw the basilica nearing completion, he must have realized that Titian's painting would not be suitable for the vast space because it was too small and too dark in tone. So in 1579 he assigned the commission to his favorite Spanish painter, Juan Fernandez de Navarrete, called ElMudo.39 Navarrete, w h o as his nickname indicates was a deaf-mute, had studied in Italy, and was said to have worked in the atelier of Titian. 40 In 1568 he had been named royal painter and in 1576 he had signed a contract for thirty-two paintings to decorate the secondary altars of the basilica. T w o conditions of the contract are noteworthy for what they reveal about Philip's style of patronage as it developed in the 1570s. O n e clause established the absolute authority of the king to judge the finished pictures: "And if the paintings do not satisfy His Majesty or the prior acting in his name, they will be rejected and not received, and he will be obliged to paint others which satisfy His

Fig. 12. Titian, Martyrdom of St. El Escorial, O l d C h u r c h .

Lawrence.

This account is based o n Cloulas (1968). For additional details, see Muller (1976).

See Mulcahy (1980). 40

T h e career of Navarrete has n o t been fully studied; for his w o r k at the Escorial, see Z a r c o Cuevas (1931), 1-51.

Philip II as Art Collector and Patron

31

Fig. 13. Navarrete the M u t e , Baptism of Christ El Escoria].

Zarco Cuevas (1931), 39.

Zarco Cuevas (1931), 40.

Sigiienza ([1605] 1923), 400.

Sigiienza ([1605] 1923), 424 Siguenza's full statement of the reasons for the rejection of the painting as suitable f o r an altarpiece concisely summarize Philip's aesthetic preferences after 1570 By these standards, El Greco's f a m o u s painting is undoubtedly a fadure In addition to purely artistic considerations, the king m a y have been motivated to refuse El Greco further commissions because of the dispute over the price of the picturc.

Zarco Cuevas (1932), 54.

32

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Majesty." 4 1 Another warned the artist against the danger of impiety: "And in said pictures, he will put neither cat, nor dog, nor any dishonest figure. All must be saints and inspire devotion." 4 2 The cost of satisfying the king's conditions came high, as the Baptism of Christ, a typically restrained work by Navarrete, shows (Fig. 13). But as Navarrete's successors, El Greco and Federico Zuccaro, were to learn, the cost of not satisfying the king was even higher. T h e untimely death of El M u d o in 1579 led Philip to look to Italy for a replacement. Years later, reviewing the procession of Italian painters w h o came to Spain and failed to please the king, José de Sigiienza lamented the passing of El M u d o in these unconsciously ironical words: "If only he had lived, we would have been saved f r o m knowing all these Italians, although without them we would not have realized the good we had lost." 4 3 Philip's attitude toward his Italian decorators was admittedly self-contradictory. O n the one hand, he wanted to employ artists of quality, while on the other he shackled them with iconographical requirements that tended to thwart the free expression of their talent. Neither Philip nor his spokesman Sigiienza ever seems to have recognized that their demands may have been mutually exclusive. Siguenza's famous criticism of El Greco's Martyrdom of St. Maurice (Fig. 14) reveals this unresolved dichotomy. "It did not please His Majesty because it pleases but few, although they say that it is very artful and that the author is very knowledgeable, as can be seen in excellent things by his hand. [But] the saints must be painted so that they do not remove the desire to pray to them. Instead they should inspire devotion, because this is the principal effect and aim of painting." 4 4 Following the death of Navarrete, Philip commissioned the Genoese painter Lucas Cambiaso to paint the Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, but, like Titian's version of the theme it too failed to win the king's approval and was transferred to the upper cloister. Cambiaso was then given another chance and invited to Spain, where he worked f r o m 1583 until his death t w o years later. His immense fresco in the choir of the basilica (Fig. 15), which depicts Christ and God the Father in Glory with Saints and Martyrs, epitomizes the brittle but legible style that Philip had n o w come to favor. Philip's next effort brought t w o veritable masterpieces to Spain. T h r o u g h the agency of the Italian painter Niccolò Granello, w h o had been working at the Escoriai since 1575, Philip obtained Tintoretto's Adoration of the Shepherds (Fig. 18) and Veronese's Annunciation (Fig. 16). 45 However, neither of these works, although admired by the king, was deemed suitable to remain permanently in the altarpiece; the Nativity because the figures were too small,

Fig. 14 El Greco, Martyrdom of St. Maurice El Escoriai.

Fig 15 Lucas Cambiaso, Paradise. El Escorial, Basilica

the Annunciation because it was not the right subject. (The rejection o f Veronese's picture can be explained only by a decision to change the iconographie program o f the altarpiece.) Also, neither artist was willing to leave Venice for Spain, an inalterable condition o f royal employment. Philip then ordered his ambassador in Rome to renew the search for a worthy artist who would agree to come to the Escorial. At length, the name o f Federico Zuccaro was proposed. Zuccaro was a renowned if not especially brilliant artist, who had been recommended to Philip as early as 1578. He was appointed pintor del rey on 20 January 1586 and assigned a generous stipend. 46 B y the end o f the year, he had completed the eight paintings for the altarpiece and proudly invited the king to inspect the last two he had done, the Adoration of the Shepherds (Fig. 17) and the Adoration of the Magi

For Zuccaro at the Escorial, see Zarco Cuevas (1932), 193-215

Philip II as Art Collector and Patron

33

Fig. 16. Veronese, Annunciation. El Escorial, New Museums.

Fig. 17. Federico Zuccaro, Adoration of the Shepherds. El Escorial, Basilica.

Fig. 18. Tintoretto, Adoration of the Shepherds. El Escorial, New Museums.

Jonathan Brown

(Fig. 19). It would be impossible to improve upon Sigiienza's report of the laconic but devastating reaction of the king: When he finished them, Federico was so enamored of his work that he wanted His Majesty to see them before they were placed in the altar. When His Majesty arrived to see them, having been placed in a favorable light, he said, full of confidence: "Sire, this is what art can do; the pictures can be seen both near and at a distance." The king said nothing, displaying only those good manners and grace with which he answered all. . . . He spent a while in looking at them and then he asked about the contents of a basket held in two hands by the shepherd, to present them to the Virgin Mother. Was this right? he asked. The answer was yes. Everyone present took note of it, realizing that he had paid little attention to the rest of the picture. And what had appeared improper was that a shepherd who had come in the middle of the night should have had so many eggs, because he did not tend chickens. At length, these two pictures were set in the intended place; but once he [Zuccaro] left . . . the king ordered them removed from the altarpiece, together with the M a r t y r d o m of St. Lawrence, which was also by his hand. The latter was removed from the house and placed in a chapel where the workmen hear mass and receive the sacraments.47

Zuccaro's next attempt to please the king was equally a failure, and so he was sent home, but not before collecting over 8,000 ducats and a lifetime pension. The king's only comment after Zuccaro's departure was, "The fault is not his, but of those who sent him here." Zuccaro was succeeded by an unusual choice, Pellegrino Tibaldi, who after starting his career as a painter had been working mostly as an architect in the years before his summons to Spain.48 Tibaldi was clearly the most talented of the three Italians, although his style was more manneristic than that of his predecessors. His new versions of the three paintings by Zuccaro that had been rejected (Fig. 20) were installed together with the five others by Zuccaro that the king had decided to keep. Although the troubled history of the altarpiece suggests that the crowning element of the basilica was an artistic failure, such is not the case. The mediocre paintings are subsumed by the magnificent architectural framework designed by Juan de Herrera and adorned by the sculpture of Leone and Pompeo Leoni (Fig. 21).49 Like a piece of jewelry in which an ornate setting outshines a mediocre gemstone, the framework more than compensates for the lackluster pictures. The architecture is constructed of red marble with gilt ornamentation. Gilded bronze statues of the Four Fathers of the Western Church, the four Evangelists, and Saint Andrew and Saint James Major occupy the first three stories of the structure. At the top, Peter and Paul flank a crucifixion scene. These superb works of sculpture were executed in Milan

Fig. 19. Federico Zuccaro, Adoration of the Magi. El Escoriai, Basilica.

Sigüenza ([1605] 1923), 400-402.

For Tibaldi at the Escorial, see Zarco Cuevas (1932), 217-69, and Scholz (1984).

For the documentation of the sculpture, see Plon (1887), 200-229 Philip

II as Art

Collector

and

Patron

50

An important exception is El Greco's design for the altarpiece of Santo D o m i n g o el Antiguo, Toledo. For further information o n the development of the designs of Spanish altarpieces in the period, see Martin Gonzalez (1964).

See Zarco Cuevas (1931), 108-109. T h e date of this document can be approximately established by a record o f payment for the retouching of the Annunciation b y Zuccaro (2 September 1593); see Zarco Cuevas (1931), 111.

by the aged Leone Leoni and were installed just as Tibaldi was completing the last paintings. T h e altarpiece of the Escorial was thus transformed into a splendid w o r k of art. At the same time, it also became a milestone in the history of Spanish sculpture. Prior to its completion in 1591, most altarpieces were composed of sculpture, with only minor elements of painting. 50 In the Escorial altarpiece, the priorities were reversed, a new fashion that lasted throughout the next century. Thus the long, unhappy history of the altarpiece seemed to draw to a successful close. But one more episode was still to come. In about 1592 a minor Spanish painter, Juan Gomez, was commissioned to repaint three of the canvases, the Assumption, the Pentecost, and the Resurrection. In particular, he was asked to change the faces of the Virgin and Christ. 5 1 Gomez's results are still visible

Fig. 21. Main Altarpiece. El Escorial, Basilica.

Jonathan Brown

today: the retouched figures appear to be wearing wooden masks that eliminate every trace of personality and feeling. Gómez also performed similar tasks on other paintings in the Escorial, substituting, for example, angels for women in a painting of Saint Jerome by Zuccaro. According to the documents, some of his emendations were devised by Sigüenza, acting in the capacity of royal censor. Gómez was not the only nor by any means the best of the Spanish painters to work at the Escorial. There seems, in fact, to have been an attempt to train native painters to imitate foreign masters. 52 Alonso Sánchez Coello, for instance, studied with Mor and continued to practice the stern style of portraiture preferred by the king (Fig. 22). Other painters became specialists in the correct but bloodless style required for religious paintings. Miguel Barroso (1538-1590) and Luis de Carvajal (1534-1607) (Fig. 23) exemplify how Spanish painters acquired the mastery of the Counter-Reformation style. Modest in achievement and perhaps chosen for their willingness to conform to the king's wishes, these now-forgotten artists represent the first step in the creation of a new style of Spanish painting, one that would be fully developed in the following century. Hence, in the twilight years of his reign, the conduct of the king began to resemble the image projected by the unsympathetic biographers. Yet this finale was a long time in coming. Even in his dealings with Zuccaro, one can discern a disappointment compounded of aesthetic and doctrinal criteria alike. But, finally, the aged king, beset by painful illness and military and economic reverses, retreated for consolation into his faith, where matters of artistic style might have seemed impertinent, if not irrelevant, to the suspenseful drama of salvation that lay just ahead. Philip's rule over the Spanish monarchy lasted a full forty-two years. The consequences and effects of this lengthy reign will probably always be debated by students of European history. But for the historian of art, the effects of Philip's patronage of the visual arts are unmistakably clear and unmistakably important. When Philip ascended the throne, Spanish artists were cau-

Unfoitunately, there is little recent literature on the Spanish painters at the Escorial; despite its flaws, Zarco Cuevas (1931) remains the basic work of reference.

Fig. 22. Alonso Sánchez Coello, Infanta Isabel Clara Eugenia. Madrid, Prado Museum. Philip II as Art Collector and

Patron

37

Fig. 23 Luis de Carvajal, St. Leocadia and St Engracia. El Esconal, Basílica.

For valuable observations o n the influence of the Esconal painters o n the history of seventeenth-century Spanish art, see Perez Sanchez (1963).

For building projects sponsored b y the king in M a d r i d and Toledo, see B u s t a m a n t e Garcia (1976) and Marias (1977).

38

Jonathan Brown

Fig 24 Vicente Carducho, Death of the Venerable Odón de Novara. Madrid, P r a d o Museum

tiously testing the modes of Renaissance Italy, while still holding fast to a late-Gothic style of N o r t h e r n origin. By the time of Philip's death, the Golden A g e of Spanish Baroque art was about to begin, led b y artists w h o had learned their profession by w o r k i n g in the s h a d o w of the Escorial. As w e have seen, Philip's taste in the arts u n d e r w e n t a p r o f o u n d transform a t i o n during the long years of his reign. B u t his investment of m o n e y in building and collecting never faltered and eventually paid h a n d s o m e dividends. T h e paintings of Titian that he acquired w o u l d one day inspire Velazquez, while the m o n u m e n t a l decorations of the Italians, almost regardless of quality, w o u l d help artists like C a r d u c h o (Fig. 24), Ribalta, Roelas, and eventually Z u r b a r a n to shape the solemn, powerfully restrained view of m a n and the w o r l d beyond that is a principal glory of Spanish B a r o q u e painting. 5 3 In architecture as well, Philip's sponsorship of the estilo desomamentado set the fashion for the unique f o r m s of seventeenth-century Spanish architecture (Fig. 25). 54 N o r was the king's influence limited to his domains. T h e Escorial, b y setting a n e w standard of scale for princely buildings and harnessing the language of architecture to express e n o r m o u s personal p o w e r ,

Fig. 25. Juscpc Leonardo, View of the Bum Retiro. Madrid, Municipal Museum.

inspired the great monarchical palaces of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As Whitehall, Versailles, Mafra, and Caserta all testify, the "black spider of the Escorial" spun an intricate web that captured the imagination of artists and patrons for generations to come.

Pkilip

II as Art Collector and

Patron

39

II

Philip II and the Geographers

Richard L.

vasari < [i55o] 1927) 2116 2

Einhard ([831] 19«), chap. 33.

Kagan

T h e Spanish views of Anton van den Wyngaerde remained unpublished for centuries, but Philip II would have wanted it otherwise. Possibly he intended these drawings for his own private enjoyment, but far more likely he commissioned them for other, more public purposes, perhaps a town atlas depicting the cities of Spain. They may also have served as designs for larger views put on public display in the royal palace in Madrid. If this was Philip's plan, what were his motivations? It appears that to some extent he was seeking to emulate the practices of earlier sovereigns. In 1484, for example, Pope Innocent VIII had commissioned the Umbrian artist Pinturicchio to decorate the Loggia of the Vatican's Villa Belvedere with views of various Italian cities. According to Vasari, "he painted a loggia full of landscapes . . . with views of Rome, Milan, Genoa, Florence, Venice, and Naples, in the Flemish style." 1 Presumably, these views were intended to demonstrate that the Pope, spiritually at least, was Italy's supreme ruler. A much earlier precedent was set by Charlemagne who at his death in 814 left three tables decorated with "descriptions" of Rome, Constantinople, and the world, as if favorably to compare his empire to that of ancient Rome. 2 As Europe's most powerful ruler in the sixteenth century, Philip had similar aspirations (Fig. 26). It is probable that he intended Van den Wyngaerde's drawings to glorify his monarchy by illustrating the number, size, and magnificence of Spain's cities, and this, no doubt, explains why he sought to have these drawings engraved. But other, less propagandistic motivations also seem to have persuaded him to sponsor Van den Wyngaerde's many trips across Spain. Philip inherited from his father, Charles V, a keen interest in astronomy, cosmography, geography, navigation, and the natural world. The Holy Rom a n em eror P > according to the Spanish cosmographer Alonso de Santa Cruz, was "much attracted" to these sciences and more than once summoned Santa Cruz to court to teach him more about these and related sub-

jects. 3 In 1539, for example, when Charles was laid up with gout in Toledo, he spent "most of his days closeted with me, Alonso de Santa Cruz, his royal cosmographer, learning about astrology, the earth and the theory of the planets, and other things about sea charts and cosmographical globes, from which he derived much amusement and delight." 4 Another of Charles's science teachers was the great German astronomer and mathematician, Petrus Apianus (1495-1552), who dedicated the second edition of his famous Libro de cosmographia (first published in 1524) to the emperor. Maps were another of Charles's special interests. Gerhardus Mercator, the famous cartographer, dedicated his 1540 map of Flanders to Charles (Fig. 27). The emperor also sponsored the work of Jacob van Deventer, known for his maps of the Low Countries/Charles also encouraged Spanish cartographers. Santa Cruz, in a letter to the emperor on 10 November 1551, noted that he had recently finished "a Spain, the size of a large banner," in addition to a series of maps of other European countries. Santa Cruz ended the letter by thanking Charles for his support: "I consider that it was Your Majesty who gave me the inspiration, as well as the support, for everything I have done." 5 The emperor's interest in cartography also extended to the New World. Explorers, governors, and viceroys in those provinces were regularly instructed to provide Charles with maps, pictures, and other "descriptions." Charles shared his passion for cartography and geography with his queen, the Empress Isabel of Portugal, who seems to have inherited her interest in these subjects from her father, Manoel I, famous for his support of Portuguese voyages of discovery. In 1536, in a letter to the viceroy of New Spain, she wrote: "We very much want to have a plan or picture of the principal cities, ports, and coastline of that land. " 6 The empress's geographical interests were shared by her brother, King John III, who in 1537 sent the young miniaturist Francisco de Holanda "to see and make drawings of the fortresses and of the most famous and notable things in that country." 7 Holanda's volume of drawings, which included a profile view of the walls and city of San Sebastian, eventually found its way into the library at the Escorial (Fig. 28). Philip's introduction to geography thus began at an early age, although he probably did not receive formal instruction in the subject until 1541, when he was fourteen. Until then his education had been entrusted to Juan Siliceo Martinez, a stern theologian, but Charles's growing dissatisfaction with Siliceo led him to appoint two humanists, Juan Gines de Sepulveda and Honorato Juan, as supplementary tutors. Their principal task was to improve the prince's knowledge of Latin and, additionally, to offer the prince instruction in the sciences, notably architecture, astronomy, geography, and

S a n a C r u z ( [ 1 5 5 1 - 1 5 7 2 ] 1920-1925), 3:435.

Santa C r u z ([1551-1572] 1920-1925), 4:24.

Corpus documental ie Carlos V (1973-1981), 3:374.

Jimenez de la Espada (1881-1897), l:xliii. 7

B u r y (1979), 164.

41

Fig. 26. Rubens. Philip II m Madrid, P r a d o M u s e u m .

Horseback.

These b o o k s w e r e a m o n g m a n y b o u g h t for Philip b y J u a n Cristóbal Calvete de Estrella, o n e of his tutors; see Antolin (1919), 4 3 - 4 9 .

P t o l e m y ([ca. 170] 1932), b k . 1, chap. 1.

Apianus (1548), chap. 4.

Richard L.

Kagan

mathematics. To judge by his later career, these were subjects for which the prince had a particular aptitude, and as early as 1545 he was introduced to architectural treatises by Serlio and Vitruvius, Ptolemy's Almagest, Apianus's Libro de cosmographia, the w o r k of the ancient geographer Pomponius Mela, as well as De revolutionibus by Nicolas Copernicus, a book that would have radically changed Philip's understanding of the world and its place in the heavens. 8 Philip's study of geography principally involved the study of Ptolemy, whose Cosmographia, first translated into Latin f r o m the Greek in 1410 and subsequently available in many editions, appears to have inspired many of Philip's later cartographic and geographic projects. The Ptolemaic method implied a scientific search for a correct description of the earth's surface. Geography Ptolemy defined as "a representation in picture of the whole k n o w n world together with the phenomena which are contained therein"—as distinguished f r o m chorography, whose task was "to describe the smallest details of places." These t w o disciplines were thus separate but complementary. Chorography was to deal primarily with particulars, even the "smallest conceivable localities," and to "paint a true likeness of the places it describes"; "chorography needs an artist, and no one presents it rightly unless he is an artist." In contrast, geography, which concerns "regions and their general features," especially the size and location of places relative to other places, requires someone trained in the principles of geometry and mathematics. 9 Philip's understanding of geography was also influenced by Apianus, whose book on cosmography was presented to him in 1545. Apianus, one of his father's teachers, was a faithful follower of Ptolemy, as his definition of chorography makes abundantly clear:

Chorography is the same thing as topography, which one can define as the plan of a place that describes and considers its peculiarities in isolation, without consideration or comparison of its parts either among themselves or in relation to other places. But at the same time chorography carefully takes note of all particularities and properties, as small as they may be, that are worth noting in such places, such as ports, towns, villages, river courses, and all similar things, including buildings, houses, towers, walls, and the like. The aim of chorography is to depict a particular place, just as an artist paints an ear or an eye or other parts of a man's head [Fig. 29].10

Although most sixteenth-century geographers, along with Apianus, considered chorography inferior to geography, they understood that topographically accurate descriptions of cities were an essential part of their search for a

Fig. 27. Gerhardus Mcrcator, Map of Flanders, a reduced version of the "Great Map of Flanders" presented to Charles V in

Fig. 28. Francisco de Holanda, Study of the fortifications of Fuenterrabia and San Sebastian, Os desenhos das Antigualhas (fol. 42™). El Escorial, Library.

scientific representation of the earth. Philip's understanding of geography rested upon similar precepts. If Philip received his formal instruction in scientific geography in Spain, he learned about the more practical side of the subject on his visit to the Low Countries, beginning in 1548. Flanders was then, along with Portugal, the cartographic center of Europe, and there he encountered the work of such famous cartographers as Mercator and Van Deventer, both of whom were in his father's service. He also met Hieronymus Cock, another cartographer, who in honor of Philip's marriage to Mary Tudor in 1554 presented the prince with an engraved map and plan of the city of Antwerp. On this journey Philip may have also learned about Anton van den Wyngaerde, who had already completed topographical views of Amsterdam, Brussels, Dordrecht, and Genoa. Philip

II and the Geographers

43

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taken place very few years earlier, some time after 1553. But the primary focus of the reform of this old district, the almudeina of M u h a m m a d I, was the royal Alcázar (p. 118), which constituted the "eccentric" center and the raison d'etre of Madrid, which Philip II selected as the site of his court in 1561. T h e Alcázar rose in Islamic times, after 875, and w e can f o r m an idea of h o w it originally looked f r o m its western face, w h o s e towers and walls are but an extension of the city walls. D u r i n g the fifteenth century, w h e n M a d r i d was growing in importance, J o h n II of Castile m a d e some changes in the building, installing a royal apartment in the northern wing and a chapel in the eastern. T h e latter was covered by a techo artesanado, a wood-paneled ceiling typical of the mudejar style, which was restored by Alonso de Covarrubias and would remain in place until the palace was destroyed by fire at Christmas 1734. However, it was

Charles V w h o decided to convert the medieval castle into a Renaissance palace. Work began in 1536 under the direction of the Toledan Covarrubias and Luis de Vega, w h o began remodeling the interior with the Patio del Rey, the chapel, and the n e w staircase. In 1540 construction was begun on n e w quarters to the east, surrounding the Patio de la Reina, which d o u bled the size of the Alcázar. They also rebuilt the exteriors of the n e w and old southern facades, as a visual continuation of the eastern facade, in the Renaissance style characteristic of the Toledan architect, a facade interrupted by t w o ancient fortified towers, H o m e n a j e and Bastimento. B y 1562 the construction had cost 235,000 ducats. After this date, Juan Bautista de Toledo concentrated on raising the n e w Torre D o r a d a on the southwest corner, a tower divided b y three high w i n d o w e d floors and crowned b y a pyramidal slate roof in the Flemish style,

114

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Madrid [F] Vienna 35™ (P & W, 382 X 1285 mm).

117

completed in 1568 by Gaspar de Vega. Around the same time work proceeded on the Torre de la Reina on the northeastern corner. With these projects, the architecture o f the palace was almost finished, though its interior decoration was not. But the palace would soon lose its "Covarrubian" appearance, for at the beginning o f the following century Juan Gomez de Mora built a screen-facade that hid the old towers and emphasized the courtly aspect o f the Alcazar. Travelers and chroniclers o f the period were unable to agree as to whether Charles V and Philip II had succeeded in their intentions o f giving Madrid a courtly appearance. In 1574 Lambert Wyts wrote: " T h e city is the filthiest o f any in Spain; the pans o f chamberpots are seen on every street and urinals full o f excrement are emptied onto the streets, causing an

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unbelievable stench." But Pérez de Messa noted that there was no "comer in Madrid that could not be viewed with rare delight and admiration o f the buildings," and wondered to himself whether Rome had "flowered with greater beauty or nobility." In reality, Madrid was a mixture: a capital with good air and bad odors, with many fountains but also many urinals, with a river that resembled a stream, and a patchwork o f royal palaces, lodgings for the courtiers, and the casas de malicia, the modest dwellings in which most o f the population lived. Bibliography: Justi (1895); Exposición del antigrn Madrid (1926), fig. 39; Iííguez Almech (1952); Brown and Elliott (1980). fig. 1; Kagan (1985). 2:379; Orso (1986), figs. 1 and 2; Moran Turina and Checa Cremades (1986), 54-55.

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1.2.

Valsaín

The "House in the Woods of Segovia" at Valsaín is the only one of the country residences of Philip II— which included homes at Aranjuez, Aceca, and El Pardo—to have been represented by Van den Wyngaerde. The forest, located at the northernmost cascade in the Sierra de Guadarrama, was one of the traditional hunting grounds of the Castilian court from the time of the Trastamara dynasty. It was founded as such by Henry III at the end of the fourteenth century. The original nucleus of the royal house, a long building on a north-south axis, dated from the fifteenth century. A modern western facade was added in the sixteenth century. During the reign of Charles V Valsaín continued as a game preserve and its Gothic pavilion continued to house royalty, who came to hunt deer and wild boar. In 1550, while in Brussels, Prince Philip decided to undertake the repair and improvement of the residence and charged the master of royal works, Luis de Vega, with various adjustments to its tiled roofs, chimneys, and enclosures. Two years later, Philip initiated Valsain's reconstruction, naming Luis's nephew Gaspar de Vega as maestro mayor of the work at the Casa del Bosque, as well as of other royal works, and entrusting him with the planning and supervising of the construction. Between 1552 and 1555 the prince spent 12,000 ducats on the project. Two structures were built "for hay for the deer," a millrace, and a granary for the plaza in front of the house. In 1557 work was underway on the columned gallery and a design for the eastern patio, and in 1559 new lodgings were built for the warden. At that time Gaspar de Vega returned from having accompanied Philip to England, France, and Flanders; based on what he had seen abroad, he concluded: "There is no other Aranjuez in the world, nor another woods of Segovia; all that I have seen seem mere reflections of these." From 1559 to 1565 work continued on the interior gardens, and the house was roofed with slate in the Flemish style, a task for which Philip, now king, sent

specialists from the Low Countries. Such roofs would become the architectural emblem of the Habsburg dynasty in Spain. Stucco specialists were lured from Genoa to attend to the interior decoration of the little palace, and the planners began to envision the fountains that would adorn and refresh the residence during the heat of summer. Van den Wyngaerde's view shows us the house of Valsain, surrounded by the hills and pine groves of the sierra and bound by a granite wall, still under construction. Ladders and cranes can be seen in the forecourt, and the roof of the tower on the southeast corner is but half completed. Various structures and thatched roofs indicate the residences of the workers. Altogether, in 1562 the construction was at an advanced stage. From a comparison of Van den Wyngaerde's view with an anonymous painting done in the first half of the seventeenth century (Fig. 76), we can infer that the southeast tower of the forecourt had not yet been remodeled. Nor was the facade—on the left—yet completed; two new turrets and a windowed floor over the arches of the lower gallery would be added to extend the facade to the south. Nor was the entrance yet paved. Flemish taste pervades the style of the little hunting palace where the Infanta Isabel Clara Eugenia was born in 1566. The conglomeration of apartments and towers, galleries and porches is asymmetrically arranged, as though its conception were accumulative. The interplay between northern-style peaked roofs and Italian Renaissance arcades and interiors is typical of Philip's architectural taste. Indeed, the same stylistic amalgam characterizes the masterpiece of Spanish classicism of the sixteenth century, the monastery and palace of the Escorial, a reflection of the harmony between the Flemish legacy of the Habsburgs and Renaissance Italy's captivation with the ancient world. Today little remains of this work so representative of the lifestyle of the Spanish court in the sixteenth century. The palace burned in 1700, the very year of

the death of Charles II, last of the Spanish Habsburgs. In the eighteenth century Spain's Bourbon rulers abandoned Valsain, especially after Philip V constructed his own hunting lodge, La Granja de San Ildefonso. Today, the remains of a mutilated tower, some walls, and the main portal are the only evidence of Philip's work. The pleasant and delightful mountain valley is once again overrun by wild boar, the natural bounty that occasioned the creation of this pleasure palace. F.M.

Fig. 76. Anonymous, View of Valsain. Madrid, Instituto Valencia de Don Juan.

Bibliography: Morän Turina and Checa Cremades (1986), 54-55.

120

Valsain [F] Vienna 21 (Pbr and a little wash, s/d 1562, 395 X 1120 mm). La Casa del Bosco de Sogivia ant" van den Wyngaerde pinxit AN 1562

122

1.3.

Segovia

T h e t w o views of Segovia by Van den Wyngaerde, f r o m the northeast and southwest, together f o r m a precious graphic document of the old city as it was in the sixteenth century. Segovia, legendarily founded by Hercules the Egyptian, was once the site of the R o m a n military post of Secobia. T h e Segovia repopulated after 1088 by D o n Raimundo de Borgoña had hitherto, according to the twelfth-century Muslim geographer Al-Edrisi, been only a group of small h a m lets. T h e urban configuration of Segovia after its repopulation was shaped, like its R o m a n aqueduct, by the city's site at the confluence of the Eresma and Clamores rivers. T h e city thus grew eastward f r o m its "navio de piedra," the ship-shaped rock on which its castle stood, and behind the castle f r o m north to south. O f the series of peripheral districts that developed outside the walls, the main suburb lay between the aqueduct and San Millán, the old Moorish quarter dating f r o m the Middle Ages. In 1525 Andrea N a v agero described Segovia as a "fine and large city . . . the walled city above and the suburb below, which is not smaller than the city itself, which is long and narrow. " From the southwest, several suburbs surrounded the city, which was enclosed by a wall that was evidently perfectly preserved in 1562. Leaving the city through the Puerta de San Andrés, f r o m the Barrionuevo (the Jewish quarter) or the San Miguel district, next to the slaughterhouse, one came upon a suburb that was connected to the gardens of the Clamores by a little bridge. Toward the east, crossing the Cerro de la Piedad, one came upon the monastery of Santo Spiritu, and the suburb at whose edges stood the churches of Santo D o m i n g o and San Clemente and also the Romanesque church of San Millán, whose three naves were completed in 1123 and whose tower and porticoed galleries were erected in the thirteenth century. South of the aqueduct appeared the churchcs of San

Justo and El Salvador, both evidence of the importance of this district in the Romanesque period. Tow a r d the southeast stood the fifteenth-century monastery of San Francisco; the convent of Santa Isabel, designed by Enrique Egas and Rodrigo Gil de H o n t a ñ ó n at the end of the fifteenth century; and the convent of San Antonio el Real, founded in 1455 by King Henry IV for the Franciscans and used later by the Order of the Poor Clares. These buildings attest to the development that had taken place in this area, as San Antonio had once been the pleasure palace of Henry IV. O t h e r buildings—a small hospital, the shrine of San Roque, the roadside cross (humilladero) of "la H u m i l d a d " — c o n f i r m this historical situation, despite the marginal location of Santo Tomás, a R o manesque church of the thirteenth century situated on the road to Avila. O n the northern side of the aqueduct, next to the road to Valladolid, stood the shrine of Santa Lucia and t w o hospitals, one of which was dedicated to Santa Catalina. F r o m there, toward the west, extended the old Mozarabic district of San Lorenzo, around the parish church dedicated to that saint. T h e church had a pretty five-story brick tower, whose size and simple material were in stark contrast to the large granite blocks of the R o m a n aqueduct. T h e aqueduct, which clearly separated the t w o most important districts of Segovia, was a major attraction for visitors and the subject of legends—that the devil Hercules built it overnight—and commentaries of archaeological admiration. Andrea Navagero wrote: "There is no better nor worthier thing than to see an ancient aqueduct—an extremely beautiful sight. I have seen none that equal this one either in Italy or anywhere else . . . its stones are like those in the amphitheater in Verona." Farther along, still on the north side of the Eresma, stood the Dominican monastery of Santa Cruz, founded in 1217 and rebuilt by the Reyes Católicos. 123

Even farther, facing the Puerta de Santiago, were the parish churches of Santiago and San Gil, which are no longer standing today. To the east of the churches the Puente de Vera crossed the Eresma and led to the monastery of Santa Maria del Parral, the famous Hieronymite monastery founded by Henry IV and built in the fifteenth century by Juan Gallego and Juan Guas; its tower was completed in 1529. This bridge also led to the monastery "de los Huertos" and the Cistercian monastery of San Vicente el Real. West of Santiago and San Gil, a second bridge crossed the river toward the small suburb of La Castellana,

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marked by the towers of the parish churches of San Bias and San Marcos, the site of the shrine of Nuestra Señora de la Fuencisla. Above the shrine, on a hill on the road to the village of Zamarramala, was the partially hidden Templar church of Vera Cruz, built in the Romanesque style of the thirteenth century. Within its walls, the city grew up around the "fresh and beautiful woods" (according to Pérez de Messa) of the Huerta del Rey, the royal gardens of the Alcazar, which was established in the twelfth century as a strong military bastion at the ravine where the Eresma and Clamores meet. Remodeled during the

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fourteenth century, the Alcazar served as the royal palace of the Trastamaras. A t the end of the sixteenth century it was remodeled by Francisco dc Mora. In Van den Wyngaerde's picture, it appears only slightly different than it does today; after a fire in 1862 it was renovated w i t h fewer turrets on the Torre de Juan II and a taller keep, called the Torre de los Reyes (or del Homenaje). T h e rest of the palace had by Van den Wyngaerde's time already acquired its picturesque silhouette of a miniature Flemish castle with mudejar interior. Navagero described it as "beautiful and strong." To the east extended the space where the old

cathedral had s t o o d — o n e of the few spaces cleared in the sixteenth century—until destroyed by the Segovian comuneros. Even in 1562 a few remains of its twelfth-century Romanesque naves could be seen; these were finally demolished in 1570. T h e bishop's palace was also here—Romanesque in origin, rebuilt in the fifteenth century and destroyed in the nineteenth—along w i t h the residences of the cathedral's canons. Remains of these houses are standing even today. F r o m this dense core the city spread out until it reached the eastern perimeter of its walls. O n e area

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Segovia [SOV/F] O x f o r d Large IV.100"P (Pbr and a little wash, 284 x 1001 mm).

125

of g r o w t h was bounded by the cathedral, the plaza mayor, and, on a diagonal, the Puerta de San Cebrián. O n the northern side of this zone were the tall, handsome Romanesque towers of the thirteenth-century parish churches of San Pedro de los Picos, unfortunately no longer extant, and San Esteban. O n the south side were the monastery of la Humilda (founded in 1552 on the site of the old slaughterhouse), the monastery of Nuestra Señora de la Merced (now a plaza), and the parish church of San Andrés (also R o manesque, with a tall tower). Across the ramparts, beyond the Puerta de San Andrés, was the district of La Almuzara, the old Jewish quarter or Barrionuevo. There stood the "old" synagogue—probably the thirteenth-century la Mayor— and the house of the comendador of Segovia, which was constructed directly on a block of the enclosure. T h e area, under mostly new ownership after the expulsion of the Jews in 1492, was open to redevelopment. Construction of the new cathedral of Santa María began in 1525, designed and overseen by Juan Gil de H o n t a ñ ó n and continued by his son Rodrigo. By 1541 they had finished and closed the five bays of the b o d y of the church, raised the gable end of the chapter house and library, and moved the cloister done by J u a n Guas for the old cathedral. T h e tower was finished with a set of windows different f r o m those seen today, and the plaza in front of the Puerta del Perdón of the church was to be left clear, one of the few examples of modern city planning in sixteenthcentury Segovia. Rodrigo began w o r k on the transept in the same year that Van den Wyngaerde visited the city. Another of the improvements in the city plan—the completion of the Plaza Mayor—also came about because of the construction of the new Gothic-style cathedral and, as well, because of the razing of the parish church of San Miguel in 1532. There, in 1474 Isabella la Católica had been proclaimed queen of Castile. Although the Plaza M a y o r looks complete in Van den Wyngaerde's view, the w o r k actually extended over several decades. Above the Romanesque church of San Martin was the grandest district of the city, with its many large houses featuring high, 126

strong towers. Those recognizable in Van den Wyngaerde's drawing include the house of the Lozayas (called Grassa) and those of the Galaches and Arias Davila—symbols of the wealth of the local aristocracy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. O n the extreme eastern edge of this district were other similarly symbolic buildings; on one side, the Romanesque church of San Juan de los Caballeros and the church of the Jesuits, the new order founded by St. Ignatius; on the other side, the old mint, soon abandoned for the new Casa de la Moneda that Philip II built overlooking the Eresma. T h e Segovia of the sixteenth century was still a lively, wealthy city. In 1561 it had 22,000 inhabitants; by 1594 there were 28,000 residents, served by twenty-three parish churches, eleven monasteries, seven convents, and three hospitals. It was a city of laborers, most of w h o m worked in textiles, Segovia's leading industry. Its fields, poor in wheat, served as pastures for herds of sheep, whose wool was bought by local traders. Segovians, both men and women, worked the wool; in their homes within the city walls or in the fulling mills on the Eresma, Segovians sorted, carded, combed, wove, finished, and dyed. Their segovias were sold all across Spain and exported to the Americas. In addition, Segovia's mills produced bread for local consumption and paper and parchment for export, for the city had not a single printer. The sixteenth century was one of the most prosperous eras in Segovia's history. But the city's failure to diversify its economy or to renovate its physical plant left it poorly prepared to care for the unemployed or to withstand competition f r o m international markets. By 1599 plague, a scarcity of wheat, hunger, and bankruptcy contributed to the city's rapid decline. T h e production of textiles was abandoned, and Segovians turned to the export of wheat and wool. In 1611 the expulsion of the moriscos f r o m Spain dealt another blow to Segovia, which had been previously enriched by their craftsmanship. This former factory t o w n was thus gradually transformed into one of the many convent-cities of seventeenth-century Castile. F.M.

127

Segovia [F] O x f o r d Large IV.100 b o " o m (P & W, s/d 1562, 264 X 1473 m m ) . Antvan den Wyngaerde fecit ad vivum a. 1562

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1.4.

Toledo

Van den Wyngaerde visited Toledo in 1563, two years after Philip II had moved his court to Madrid. But the Imperial City remained Spain's spiritual capital, its primal see, and a cultural center of the first rank. Contrary to often-repeated misinterpretations, this old city, which the Romans had captured in 193 B.C., did not expire when the court left; its demise did not occur until the great crisis of 1604 and the definitive establishment of Madrid as the kingdom's capital by Philip III in 1606. Rather the period between 1561 and 1606 was a time of great splendor for Toledo, as the city sought, at any cost, to lure the court to return. A program of renovation, enormous expansion, and embellishment was undertaken to make the city appear attractive and modern—a Second Rome—to the monarch seated in Madrid. Toledan panegyrists called the city "the king's district and work," a "Second Constantinople": that is, the political court, but neither the capital nor the center of the Spanish realms. Toledo reached its apogee in the 1570s, when it was the largest city of the two Castiles, with 62,000 inhabitants in 1571. (In 1561 the population had been 56,000; by 1591 it would drop to 55,000.) El Greco, the most important artist on the Iberian peninsula, worked there. The architect Juan de Herrera and his followers remodeled the look of its buildings, streets, and plazas. Juanelo Turriano, the famous watchmaker f r o m Cremona, devised a waterworks that carried water to the Alcazar, thereby realizing one of the city's perennial dreams. Antonelli, some years later, would unite Toledo and Lisbon by means of the Tagus River. A productive economy and commerce continued to provide jobs and riches. The archbishopric took up the spiritual improvement of its parishioners with new enthusiasm, and its prelates, Gaspar de Quiroga and Bernardo de Sandoval y Rojas, tried to rival, with their patronage of works of art and architecture, their famous predecessors Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza and Cardinal Cisneros. 130

But in 1563, at the time of Van den Wyngaerde's visit, this late blossoming of splendor had not yet begun; in his work we see the city of the late fifteenth century and the reign of Charles V, the Egas family, and Covarrubias. At that time, Hieronymus Münzer wrote, "Art and nature have collaborated to fortify the city." Toledo rose on its rock, surrounded by the ravine of the Tagus on the south, open to the Sagra plain on the north, but protected there by a double wall. Around it to the east and west stretched the open plains. To the east, the Huerta del Rey (King's Garden), with its irrigation wheels and cultivated fields, surrounded the old palaces of Galiana and the isle of Antolinez with its vineyards. To the west was the plain justifiably celebrated by the poet Garcilaso de la Vega and some of the most delightful of Toledo's orchards. The road to Aranjuez, off to the east, was defended by the castle of San Servando, a fort since Roman times, which had been rebuilt in its definitive form by the archbishop Pedro Tenorio in the late fourteenth century. Entry into the city was made across the Puente de Alcántara, a ninth-century stone bridge built by the Muslims and reconstructed in the thirteenth century by Alfonso X the Wise, the king who consolidated the famous Toledan school of translators. The bridge's two defensive towers, also dating from the Muslim period, were still standing in 1563; the eastern one collapsed in 1721. O n the western side of the Imperial City, outside the old Puente de San Martín (also rebuilt by Tenorio) and near the road to Mérida were two of the oldest sacred buildings in Toledo—the shrine of San Ildefonso and the basilica of Santa Leocadia (an abbey in the sixteenth century). In them were buried, during Visigothic times, two of the city's most important patron saints. The shrine was occupied in 1612 by Discalced Trinitarians; it seems to have been destroyed in the nineteenth century. The basilica was reconstructed in the mudejar style in 1121; some of its ruins can still

be seen. A bit farther along was San Bartolomé de la Vega, the n e w monastery of the M i n i m s of the order of St. Francis de Paula. T h e church w o u l d be r e m o d eled after 1581 by the architect Nicolás de Vergara the Younger. Since 1811 there has been no trace of this sixteenth-century construction. T h e central part of the e n t r y w a y into the city f r o m Illescas and Madrid to the n o r t h had also been recently built—on the ruins of the R o m a n circus, hipp o d r o m e , and temple so venerated by Toledan h u manists. O n these ruins, t o w a r d the shore of the Tagus, spread the extramural district of Las C o v a chuelas, begun in the thirteenth century. After 1541 this area became the hospital district of Toledo disposed around a street b o u n d by the great Hospital de San Juan Bautista, founded by Cardinal D o n Juan Tavera, and its outbuildings. In 1318 the C o u n t of O r g a z , Gonzalo Ruiz de Toledo, had founded the hospital of San A n t ó n for those sick with the "sacred fire" contracted f r o m rye grain contaminated by ergot; the building was demolished in 1810. In 1418 the hospital n a m e d San Lázaro was built to care for victims of scurvy, scabies, and leprosy; in 1560 it became a royal hospital. E v e n today a mudejar apse and a tower of the original construction can be seen. As an institution, the hospital disappeared early in the nineteenth century. T h e Hospital de Tavera, which Covarrubias designed and built until 1550, is seen in 1563 w i t h its t w o courtyards and southern and eastern facades complete. H e r n á n González had begun the foundations and crypt of the enormous sepulchral chapel of the founder. This hospital is the first m a j o r Toledan building constructed in a truly Renaissance style. T o w a r d Madrid, the city ended at the shrine of San Eugenio, the third of Toledo's patron saints. It was built in 1156, w i t h a mudejar- style apse marked by multilobed arches, w h e n the city obtained one of the saint's relics; other relics arrived in 1565. Facing the Tavera hospital, the city wall opened t h r o u g h its m o s t m o n u m e n t a l gate, the Puerta N u e v a de Bisagra, also completed in 1563. In addition to the portal's massive flanking towers and the imperial standard over the arch of the entryway, Covarrubias

designed a banner in stone that announced the Imperial City. In f r o n t of the gate, the Plaza de Merchán was cleared at about the same time. O n its far western side rose a stone column or gallows, symbolizing justice. Facing this Gothic pillar was the city gate Van den Wyngaerde calls the "old" Puerta de Bisagra, w h i c h today is believed to be underneath the new one. It is possible that the Puerta Vieja de Bisagra is the same as that today called the Puerta de Alfonso VI, the little gate of La Granja, or the Puerta A l m a guera. At the e x t r e m e opposite of this first walled precinct, erected after 1101 by Alfonso VI, was the Albarrán tower w i t h the Puerta del Almofala (or Puerta del Vado). This enclosure girdled Toledo's oldest extramural suburbs: San Isidoro, La Antequeruela, and Santiago. These neighborhoods probably date f r o m the late ninth or early tenth century; later they were inhabited mostly by potters, bakers, and moriscos. Santiago's thirteenth-century mudejar church, dedicated to St. James matamoros ("the Moorslayer"), is still extant. T h e wall surrounding these districts joined the main rampart (originally Visigothic, reconstructed and n a m e d Tulaytula by the Muslims) near the Puerta del C a m b r ó n , also called the Puerta de San Martín. T h a t gate w a s remodeled in 1572 w h e n it became, along w i t h the Puerta N u e v a de Bisagra, one of the main gates to the city. Along these second walls, interrupted b y m a n y towers, were other important city gates—the Puerta del Sol (then called Baja de la H e rrería), Puerta del Valmardón (also called del Christo de la Luz) and Puerta de Alarcones. T h r o u g h these one entered a city that was, according to Andrea Navagero, "irregular, hilly, and austere, w i t h n a r r o w streets and only a small plaza called the Z o c o d o v e r . . . . Its inhabitants live very closely together . . . w i t h o u t a single garden." F r o m the Puerta del C a m b r ó n , m o v i n g t o w a r d the tower of the parish church of San Martin de Tours (rebuilt in the late sixteenth century, destroyed in the mid-nineteenth), one reached the monastery of the Calced Augustinians, built into the ramparts w i t h a lookout (las vistillas) that afforded extensive views. T h e monastery, established b y Alfonso X in 1312 at

132

Toledo [F] Vienna 19 (Pbr and a little blue wash, s/d 1563, 420 x 1075 mm). Ani' van den Wyngaerde f . ad vivum 1563

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the boundary of the old Jewish quarter, was r e m o d eled f r o m 1552 to 1569 by Covarrubias. Farther along, off to the east, stood one of the principal m o n u m e n t s of Toledo: the Franciscan monastery of San Juan de los Reyes, whose late-Gothic church and d o m e are perfectly visible in this view. Founded by the Reyes Católicos in 1476, after the battle of Toro, the monastery was built by Juan Guas, Simón de Colonia, and Enrique Egas, masters of the Flamboyant Gothic style; a last cloister was added by Covarrubias. Nearby, overlooking the ramparts, were some of Toledo's most important sixteenth-century t o w n houses. Unfortunately, the celebrated house of D o n Fernando de la Cerda had not yet been constructed, but Van den Wyngaerde shows us the house of D o n

Fernando de Silva, a mixture of the old—peaked turrets—and the new—the galleries overlooking the plains beyond the city. Such galleries had been introduced to Toledo by Hernán González in about 1555, and they symbolized the new, m o r e public w a y of life initiated by the Renaissance. T h e nearby h o m e of D o n Diego de Vargas, secretary of Philip II, tried to rival Toledo's royal palace, the Alcázar. Built between 1558 and 1563, the Casa de Vargas was the grandest example of the splendor of architectural expression in sixteenth-century Toledo. It was constructed by Francisco de Villalpando based on designs by Luis de Vega, a m e m b e r of the court at Madrid. Its galleries in the style of Serlio and its rusticated w i n dows represented the latest w o r d in the Italian Renais-

Fig. 77. El Greco, View of Toledo. Toledo, El Greco Museum.

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sanee architectural style. T h e palace, which gallantly opened onto the grounds, was distinguished by small picturesque cupolas that crowned its towers, an element planned by Covarrubias for the Hospital de Tavera and which lent that building, the Casa de Vargas, and the Puerta N u e v a de Bisagra the colorful grace note of glazed ceramic tiles made at Talavera. Unfortunately, the last remnants of this magnificent palace, victim of neglect and disinterest, were destroyed in 1943. T h e third great noble house, that of the Marquess of Malpica, D o n Francisco de Ribera, lay farther east. Today w e k n o w little about it, except that Covarrubias w o r k e d on its interiors and tower in the 1530s. To the west are several religious buildings, among t h e m the Mercedarian monastery of Santa Catalina, founded in 1260 by San Pedro Pascual. Its church, built between 1380 and 1450, was destroyed during the War of Independence. Also in this district were the parish church of Santa Leocadia, which was remodeled, except for its mudejar tower, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; the Dominican convent of Santo D o m i n g o el Real, founded in 1364, and whose church was rebuilt after 1565; and the parish churches of San Marcos and San Román. San Marcos was one of the six old Mozarabic churches built in Toledo during Visigothic times, reconstructed after the Reconquest, and ruined in the seventeenth century. San Román, another Visigothic church, had a mudejar tower and naves dating f r o m the thirteenth century, and a main chapel completed by Covarrubias ten years before Van den Wyngaerde's arrival. Following the profile of the city to the east, we near its center. First w e come upon the finials of the episcopal palace, built in the thirteenth century and refurbished by Covarrubias in the 1540s for Cardinal Tavera. Here was another of the most important plazas of the city, the Plaza del Ayuntamiento, created during the 1550s and bordered by the city hall and the cathedral of Santa Maria. Archbishop Jiménez de Rada ordered this huge Gothic church built (1226-1493) on the site earlier occupied by a Visigothic church and the principal Muslim mosque.

136

"Because of its riches," Pedro de Medina explained, it was "one of the most famous churches in all of Spain and even of the w o r l d . " All w e can see of the dives toletana, surrounded by houses in Van den Wyngaerde's drawing, is the late-Gothic main tower, built during the last years of the fourteenth century and, farther away, the little tower crowning the Puerta del Reloj, which was perhaps the old minaret of the Islamic mosque. Remnants of this tower survived until 1899. Between the cathedral and the Alcázar were a n u m ber of churches, such as San Nicolás and La M a g dalena, both mudejar in origin and today radically modified except for parts of their towers. Between them lay the Zocodover, the plaza that Herrera tried to square off at the end of the sixteenth century. O n its eastern edge was the castle of Amrus y A b d el-Rahman II, in turn flanked by the "sumptuously crafted" (according to Navagero) Hospital de Santa Cruz, founded by Cardinal Mendoza; the church was built by Enrique Egas between 1504 and 1524. O n the other side of the castle was the convent that housed the Concepción Francisca, an order established by Beatriz de Silva in 1484 and moved to this site in 1501. Its mudejar structure was remodeled in the 1580s. Looming above these buildings and rivaling the cathedral for primacy in the cityscape was the Alcázar, which Charles V had undertaken to rebuild in 1545. B y 1563 Covarrubias had modernized the western facade and the interior courtyard, and work on the upper gallery of the northern facade was u n derway. T h e eastern facade, despite continual repairs and the reconstruction of the building, would always retain its medieval aspect, in consonance with the pinnacle of the fortified tower of the southeast corner. In broad outline, this was h o w the Imperial City looked in 1563. O n e can compare Van den Wyngaerde's Toledo with the more famous, but less exact, view by El Greco (Fig. 77)—the only t w o views of Toledo made f r o m its northern boundary during the Golden Age. F.M. Bibliography: Brown (1981); Kagan (1982), fig. 4; Brown and Kagan (1982), fig.4.

Itinerary

II

The Journey to the Kingdom of Aragon

1.

Daroca

2.

Zaragoza

3.

Monzón

4.

Lérida

5.

Cervera

6.

Montserrat

7.

Barcelona

8.

Tarragona

9.

Tortosa

10.

Murviedro (Sagunto)

11.

La Albufera and El Grao de Valencia

12.

Valencia

13.

Játiva

14.

Almansa

15.

Chinchilla de Montearagón

II. i.

Daroca

Daroca, a town whose roots can be traced to Spain's pre-Roman Celtiberian peoples, is situated at the base of some rocky crags on the eastern shore of the Jiloca River. It was the first place in Aragon that Van den Wyngaerde visited in 1563 while on the road to Zaragoza. The city, some 5,000 inhabitants gathered around seven churches, evidently interested the Flemish painter less than the vista that the site, with its hillsides and walls, presented in the afternoon: a picturesque profile crowned by the towers along the ramparts. Besides the natural attractions of the rocky landscape, Van den Wyngaerde was intrigued by the canal, which he clearly marked with an inset inscription. The great canal or water conduit, some 700 paces long, had been bored at the foot of the mountain by the French sculptor and architect Quinto Pierres Vedel between 1555 and 1560. Vedel's engineering feat, next to the thick wall known as the Barbican, enabled the town to prevent flooding by draining water into the Jiloca. Twenty years later, at the suggestion of Hendrick Cock, Philip II inspected the great Aragonese tunnel on his way through the town. Cock noted that although the city itself was small, "an enormous wall" surrounded the original castle. We know that the castle existed at the time of the Muslim invasion, because it was taken by Alfonso I of Aragon (r. 1104-1134). During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the enclosure was extended by raising new earthen walls until 114 towers rose along the perimeter. The towers were of stone and brick, materials characteristic of both military and religious architecture in Daroca. In Van den Wyngaerde's picture it appears that the town had only one important street, an axis that descended slowly from east to west. Because of the configuration of the wall, which rose steeply to the hilltops, there were large empty spaces between the houses and walls on east and west. But on the south the houses were built close to the walls. 138

Only two of the major buildings of the town can be identified. One is the twelfth-century Romanesque church of Santa Maria, which had become a collegiate church dedicated to Nuestra Señora de los Santos Corporales in 1397. The second is the Gothic lanterntower, built in the fifteenth century; between 1585 and 1598 it was encased in a new columned structure. In the church was the Capilla de los Corporales, built during the reign of Ferdinand the Catholic to house a set of holy altarcloths, the town's most precious objects of veneration. (These altarcloths had been miraculously saved and brought to Daroca by a mule in 1239, after an attack by Moors. The mule died just after entering the town.) Near Santa Maria stood the parish church and tower of Santo Domingo, also a twelfth-century Romanesque building, begun in stone and finished in brick like San Miguel or San Valero. Other churches of Daroca—including the Romanesque San Juan de la Cuesta—are not identifiable in Van den Wyngaerde's panorama. Nor can we see any of the town's four monasteries—Santísima Trinidad, once the shrine of San Marco, where the miraculous mule died; San Francisco, like the Santísima Trinidad built in the thirteenth century; San Bias, a fourteenth-century creation that belonged to the Mercedarians; and the Rosario, established in 1522. Van den Wyngaerde, in this case, does not offer us many details but depicts only the main monuments of the Aragonese town. He was more interested in the site and silhouette of medieval Daroca then in a minute description of a town that basically belonged to the past. F.M.

Bibliography: Galera i Monegal (1986).

139

D A R O C M A

141

Itinerary

II

The Journey to the Kingdom of Aragon

1.

Daroca

2.

Zaragoza

3.

Monzón

4.

Lérida

5.

Cervera

6.

Montserrat

7.

Barcelona

8.

Tarragona

9.

Tortosa

10.

Murviedro (Sagunto)

11.

La Albufera and El Grao de Valencia

12.

Valencia

13.

Játiva

14.

Almansa

15.

Chinchilla de Montearagón

II. 2.

Zaragoza

After defeating the French at St. Q u e n t i n in 1557, Philip II v o w e d to visit Nuestra Señora del Pilar, Zaragoza's f a m o u s Marian shrine. T h u s Philip, accompanied b y the royal court en route to the Cortes of the k i n g d o m of Aragón, at M o n z ó n , visited this city in 1563, and it was apparently on this historic occasion that Van den Wyngaerde prepared these views of the Aragonese capital. Situated on the right bank of the E b r o River, Zaragoza had long been an important city. In the late first century B.C., the E m p e r o r Augustus elevated the settlement to the rank of a military colony with the n a m e of Caesaraugusta. D u r i n g the era of A r a b d o m ination the city, renamed Sarakusta, rivaled C ó r d o b a in terms of b o t h wealth and prestige. Reconquered in 1118 b y Alfonso I of Aragón, Zaragoza served as the residence of the kings of A r a g ó n until 1474, after w h i c h it became the residence of the king's representative. T h e viceregal court and the presence of the principal institutions of Aragonese g o v e r n m e n t — t h e Audiencia and the Diputación—assured the city of lasting political importance. Its prestige was further enhanced b y the Aragonese nobles w h o established residence in the city in order to be close to the viceroy; their palaces gave the city a distinctive look. Also contributing to the city's prestige were its archbishops, notably H e r n a n d o de A r a g ó n (1539-1577), w h o used his wealth and influence not only to enlarge the cathedral but also to persuade the city council in 1541 to build a n e w lonja (merchant's exchange) to stimulate commercial life. T h u s at the m o m e n t of the king's visit in 1563 Zaragoza w a s still a wealthy and prosperous city of about 30,000 residents. Foreign visitors praised it as one of the m o s t elegant cities in Spain. In 1542, for example, Gaspar Barreiros, a Portuguese traveler, described it as " o n e of the best and m o s t noble cities in

142

Spain, in terms not only of its agricultural abundance but also of its location and o r n a m e n t s . " Van den Wyngaerde's view is the visual complem e n t of Barreiros's observation. T h e artist's imaginary vantage point, f r o m across the Ebro, is p u r posely elevated so as to afford a panorama that encompassed the city as well as its surrounding vega, a fertile region described in 1595 by the city's first historian, Fray Diego Murillo, as "a portrait of paradise." This view, partly based on a preliminary sketch that identifies the m a j o r landmarks lining the E b r o ' s banks and illustrates the care with which the artist located individual buildings, indicates that Zaragoza in the mid-sixteenth century was limited almost entirely to the river's west bank. T h e east bank w a s a sparsely populated suburb containing a series of villas. Its only m o n u m e n t s were the Jesuit college—its high tower m a y have served as the artist's vantage point—and, closer to the bridge, the Mercedarian convent of San Lázaro and Nuestra Señora de Altabas, established in 1517 for the Third O r d e r of Franciscan nuns. This suburb w a s connected to the city by a single bridge, which had existed since R o m a n times but was first constructed of stone in 1437. C o m p o s e d of seven arches, the span was partially destroyed during the flood of 1643; in the Vista de Zaragoza painted by Velazquez y M a z o in 1647 it appears w i t h o u t its central arch (Fig. 78). H o w e v e r , in Van den Wyngaerde's view the bridge, complemented by the hanging houses that served as guard- and customhouses, appears intact. Farther upstream the artist indicates that the E b r o was also crossed b y means of a shallow ford located near the old Trinitarian convent of San L a m berto, founded in 1522 but n o longer standing. Along the banks of the river the artist included various scenes of everyday life: workers cutting and stacking

w o o d , w o m e n washing clothes, carts pulling heavy loads, and fishermen w i t h their boats. O n the right bank the city is bounded by its adobe walls, parts of w h i c h had already begun to decay. These were punctuated by a series of gates, one of w h i c h — t h e Puerta del Angel, or del Puente—situated at the foot of the E b r o bridge, is clearly drawn. Its purpose was originally military, although by the sixteenth century it had been transformed into a ceremonial gateway of Renaissance design containing an i m portant shrine, La Virgen de la Custodia. Outside the city walls to the n o r t h is the Castillo de la Aljaferia, originally an A r a b palace, constructed in the m i d eleventh century and refurbished by Ferdinand the Catholic. In the sixteenth century it served as the tribunal and prisons of the H o l y Office. Today it is associated w i t h Giuseppe Verdi's It Trovatore. T h e political and spiritual core of sixteenth-century Zaragoza was roughly commensurable w i t h the old R o m a n cardus, the zone b o u n d e d by El Coso, an i m portant thoroughfare lined with some of the city's most elegant Renaissance palaces. These included the Palacio de Protonotario, built in the late fifteenth cent u r y b y Francisco Climente, and the Palacio de los C o n d e s de M o r a t o , built in the mid-sixteenth century and w h i c h n o w serves as an audiencia. El Coso, w h o s e

trajectory is clearly drawn, passed in front of the royal hospital, Nuestra Señora de Gracia, established in 1425 by Alfonso V of Aragon, and the monastery of San Francisco, noted for its tall Renaissance tower, before ending, alongside the old church of San Juan de los Pañetes, at the river's edge. Inside El C o s o were m o s t of the city's m a j o r m o n uments, notably La Seo, the imposing Gothic cathedral that evidently served as the focus of Van den Wyngaerde's view. Construction of this church, w h i c h replaced an older Romanesque cathedral occupying the same site, began in 1412 and was completed only in 1550, following the extension of its naves by Archbishop H e r n a n d o de Aragón. For pictorial effect Van den Wyngaerde exaggerated the proportions of the apse, dominated by its magnificent mudejar dome, completed in 1520. Otherwise, La Seo is drawn to scale and includes a glimpse of the square tower that predated the construction of an octagonal tower by Contini in 1685. Also visible is the top of the mudejar wall leading to the archiépiscopal palace that overlooks the river. This palace, another of the city's principal landmarks, was initially constructed in the fifteenth century, and by 1563 it boasted a galleried facade in the Renaissance style. T h e palace was connected, b y means of an open belvedere, to the Casas

Fig. 78. Velazquez y Mazo, View of Zaragoza. Madrid, Prado Museum.

143

de la Diputación del Reino, home of the Aragonese Cortes. This residence, also built in the mid-fifteenth century, featured a galleried facade and a patterned, colored roof; it was razed during the nineteenth century. Nearby, on the north side o f the Puerta del Angel, was the Lonja, which had been constructed between 1541 and 1551 in a Renaissance style by the architects Gil de Morlanes and Juan de Sariñena. The Lonja served as a meeting place for the city's merchants until the eighteenth century, when it was converted into a bank. Alongside it stood the city hall, a palace known for its "extended row o f windows with many balconies." Another gathering point was Nuestra Señora del Pilar, then a mudejar church situated just to the north o f the city hall. Distinguished by a series o f polygonal towers, this temple was completed at the beginning o f the sixteenth century. In 1691, however, it was replaced by a new church, designed by Francisco Herrera the Younger, in which the famous image o f Our Lady still resides. In addition to these major landmarks, the area encompassed by El Coso contained nine o f the city's seventeen parishes and one convent, El Sépulcro, which was incorporated into the walls facing the

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11.11.

La Albu jera and El Grao de Valencia

Van den Wyngaerde paid considerable attention to the environs of the city of Valencia, its gardens (La Huerta), its eastern port (El Grao), and the huge freshwater lake south of the city (La Albufera). Two of the drawings are panoramic sketches. One, probably done from life, shows the layout of the city with La Albufera in the distance (pp. 195-96, bottom); the other, from the lake and the Mediterranean coast, assumes an imaginary high vantage point (pp. 19596, top). The other two drawings are a study of the Valencian port (p. 194) and a finished study— framed in a colored outline—of the little inland sea (pp. 197-99). According to Pedro de Medina, the port of Valencia was called El Grao (shore) because of its slipways, where trading vessels loaded and unloaded and where fishing boats were moored during the summer months, when the Valencian fishermen stopped work in La Albufera. In 1563, when Van den Wyngaerde visited, El Grao (then known as Villanueva del Grao) consisted of a small boatyard and a few houses on the north shore of the mouth of the Turia, or Guadalaviar River. From the port rose a church tower and a defensive tower, which was probably used, as Cock later pointed out, when the Valencians went to El Grao to take up "their guard of the coast. . . against the invasions of the Moors and the boldness of the Africans." T o the north of the dock, which jutted into the sea, scattered barracks dotted the sandy beach, perhaps the original nucleus of the nineteenth-century Cabanal. South of the town and river, on the beach that is now called Nazaret, the Valencian fishermen used to ground their sailboats. El Grao had developed on the harbor during the Middle Ages. In the second half of the sixteenth century, the town, at a considerable distance from the waves, enjoyed the protection of an artilleried bulwark, an eminent structure joined to the older Gothic

194

arsenal. When Francis I was captured by the troops of Charles V in Pavia in 1525, the ship transporting him to Spain disembarked at El Grao. But the town did not become a truly modern and important port until the eighteenth century. La Albufera, which means "little sea" in Arabic, enters the chronicles of history in the thirteenth century when it became property of the crown, which it remained until the beginning of the nineteenth century, but it must have been used as hunting and fishing grounds in much earlier times. Situated to the south of Valencia and the Turia and fed by the Turia and the Jucar rivers, the reserve was once a bit wider than it is today, and it extended along the seacoast for about fifteen kilometers, stretching southward almost as far as the cretaceous mountain called Cullera. In Van den Wyngaerde's panoramic view the city of Denia is visible on the coast, and Montgo, the summit that marks Cape San Antonio, can be seen. T o the west, the lagoon was surrounded by a number

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265

VA.

Granada

Although Granada was officially a Christian city after its surrender to Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, its old Moorish character was slow to disappear. N e w churches, monasteries, palaces, and squares were built in the course of the sixteenth century, but these did relatively little to alter the general appearance of the city, which in the layout of its streets and the design of its houses had m o r e in c o m m o n with the densely packed Muslim cities typical of N o r t h Africa and the Middle East than with those of Renaissance Europe. Granada's Moorish inheritance was evident in the names of its principal districts (La Antequeruela, for example, settled originally by Muslims expelled f r o m Antequera in 1400; or el Alcaiceria, the central silk market) and in its landmarks, especially the Alhambra. As in Moorish times, moreover, the basis of the city's economy continued to be the manufacture of silk, or as Pérez de Messa remarked in 1589: "The silk industry is so large in this city that almost all the c o m m o n people are engaged in it. " But Granada was also changing. Its mosques were converted into churches, and the great mosque was demolished in order to make r o o m for the new cathedral, still under construction when Van den Wyngaerde made his views of the city. To govern the city and its potentially unruly Moorish population, the crown established an important royal judicial tribunal, the chancilleria—located on a new square appropriately k n o w n as the Plaza Nueva—and the Inquisition, whose offices were alongside the parish church of Santiago. In the meantime, the city's population, swelled by an influx of Christian settlers, grew to well over 50,000 by 1561. Moriscos constituted only about one-tenth of this figure, but they were expelled following their revolt against Christian rule in 1568, less than a year after Van den Wyngaerde's visit. Despite such changes, Granada's unique blend of Christian and Muslim proved attractive to artists, w h o focused on the city's monuments, people, and

266

hilly terrain. A m o n g Joris Hoefnagel's works are views of the city dated 1563 and 1565. But Hoefnagel, with his interest in landscape and genre scenes, did not depict the city with substantial accuracy. Although apparently drawn f r o m nature, Hoefnagel's view of Granada as seen f r o m the west (Fig. 82) is distorted in part by the genre scene in the foreground and appears generally unreliable, except for such details as the Jesuit college of San Pablo, with its arcaded facade (shown also by Van den Wyngaerde, 21 on p. 274). In comparison, Van den Wyngaerde's carefully constructed panorama was the painstaking product of a series of preparatory drawings, site plans, and detailed studies of individual buildings. Especially noteworthy is the marvelously detailed view of the Monastery of San Jeronimo (pp. 271-72, top), designed by Jacopo el Indaco and Diego de Siloe and built between 1504 and 1568, with its beautiful apse, dome, outlying cloisters, and nearby hospital. Van den Wyngaerde also affords several views of the cathedral, whose construction had begun in 1509. Topped out in 1528 by Diego de Siloe, its rounded choir was originally intended to serve as the pantheon of Charles V. Unfortunately, the royal chapel— where Ferdinand and Isabella, Philip I, a n d j u a n a "the M a d " were buried—is not visible, but there is an excellent sketch of the original Plaza de Bibarrambla (E on p. 275) with its fountain and the facade of the old archbishop's palace, a building entirely rebuilt in the seventeenth century. Other notable monuments visible in this picture include the Hospital del Rey (25), near the "camino de Sevilla," at the far left. This hospital was established in 1504 and constructed, beginning in 1511, according to the designs of the architect Enrique Egas. Just opposite, on the other side of the C a m p o de Triumfo, which served the Moors as a cemetery, was the parish of San Ildefonso (23), established outside the city's walls in 1501. Near the Puerta de Elvira (2),

the main gate to the city in Moorish times, were the Convent of La Merced (22), established in 1492; the Jesuit college of San Pablo (21); and the Franciscan Convent of Santa Clara (29), established in 1524. Moving toward the densely packed city center, with its numerous houses, one can detect the parish of San Andrés (18), constructed beginning in 1528; the former parish of Santiago (8), constructed between 1543 and 1553; the house that served as the tribunal of the Holy Office (19) until it was demolished in 1830; and finally the opening of the Darro River (4) and the Convent of the Discalced Trinitarians (6), whose tower was demolished in 1836. This convent overlooked the Bibarrambla suburb, an artisanal quarter known for its gardens and villas, one of which the artist identifies as the "casa del S or Phillipe do qualia orofezco." Van den Wyngaerde also carefully traces the outline of Granada's walls, and many of its defensive towers—said to number over one thousand—are clearly visible. The albaycin, the crowded Morisco quarter known for its narrow streets, is topped by the parish

Fig. 82. Joris Hoefiiagel, View of Granada, Civitates orbis terrarum (book I, fig. 4)

of San Cristobal (17), with its original tower, completed in 1559. O n the other side of Darro are the Torres Bermejas (Z), the Alhambra and Generalife, as well as the Convent of San Francisco (30), built in 1495. In ruins by the nineteenth century, this convent has been remodeled and now serves as a tourist parador. Below is the Plaza Nueva (F) built over the Darro River between 1506 and 1515. The heart of the city, it housed the royal chancilleria (C), finished in 1587, and was the customary site for both bullfights and executions. Van den Wyngaerde's careful technique is also displayed in his view of Granada as seen from the south, f r o m across the Genii River (pp. 269-70, top). In the foreground is one of Granada's suburban villas (labeled "la casa del S°r estebe[n] comyliyno in Granada") surrounded by a lush grove of olive trees and fields. Just beyond is the river, spanned by an arched bridge erected by the Moors; along the banks people are fishing and washing clothes. Nearer the city is the shrine of San Sebastian, formerly a Moorish shrine; it stands at the entrance of a broad esplanade that led up

to the old "puerta del rastro" (D), and Santa María de la O (F), indicated by its tower. Santa Maria, built in 1501, served as the city's main church until the new cathedral was erected; it was totally demolished in 1704. Also to be seen, to the east of the new cathedral (G), are San Matías, a Renaissance church rebuilt at Charles V's request beginning in 1526; the Convent of Santa Cruz el Real (S), established by the Catholic Monarchs and built in the early part of the sixteenth century; the parish of Santa Cecilia (V), a Plateresque church located in the Antequeruela; and, in the Alhambra itself, the south facade of the palace of Charles V (P), designed by Pedro Machuca and completed in 1546. Also included are such details as a historical reference to the road where the artillery was hauled up when the Catholic Monarchs took Granada (T). Van den Wyngaerde's view of the Alhambra (p. 269, bottom) offers a reliable prospect of the defensive walls of this palace complex and of the Generalife, a pleasure garden that dated back to the fourteenth century—its mirador, distinguished here by a circular stairtower leading up to the gallery, was rebuilt in the nineteenth century. The Alhambra comprised a series of buildings built at different times, the oldest of which, the Alcazaba, dates back to the ninth century. Its famous watchtower, the Torre de la Vela, is visible at the right, although it lacks the silver cross the Catholic Monarchs erected to celebrate their conquest of the city in 1492. As for the Alhambra proper, most of which was built by Granada's Nasrid rulers in the course of the fourteenth century, Van den Wyngaerde indicates only the disposition of its robust defensive towers, the tallest of which, the Torre Comares, was the site of the Sala de los Embajadores. The series of wooden miradores that stretched from this tower to the Torre de las Damas has now been restored. Below is an interesting view of a palace labeled "la casa de don Pedro de Córdoba," a building that no longer exists; on the side of the hill stands a

mill powered by water from the Alhambra's many fountains. In sum, Van den Wyngaerde's topographical accuracy and attention to detail allow a visual reconstruction of Granada in the mid-sixteenth century. His magnificent panorama of the city as seen from the west is one of his fmest and most ambitious Spanish views and does full justice to a city that travelers often praised for its "grandeza y nobleza" (grandeur and nobility). R.L.K.

Bibliography: Kagan (1985), 2:380-81; Rosenthal (1985), 22, plate 69.

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V. 5. Alhama de Granada Van den Wyngaerde's quickly rendered sketch o f Alhama, probably drawn from nature, provides a unique view o f a town that was almost completely destroyed by a catastrophic earthquake in 1884. Van den Wyngaerde probably stopped here in 1567, on his way from Granada to Cádiz, possibly because o f the famed hot sulfur springs, whose curative properties had attracted visitors to Alhama since Roman times. In the sixteenth century these baths continued to attract people from all parts o f Spain and offered, according to Pérez de Messa, "much relief to the

infirm." The artist makes reference to these springs at the extreme right o f his drawing, although the bathhouse, stables, and outbuildings that surrounded them are not depicted. These structures, portions o f which still exist, are also visible injoris Hoefnagel's view of Alhama (Fig. 83). Alhama, which takes its name from the Arabic word for baths, sits on a rock ledge that overlooks a deep gorge traversed by the Merchan River (also called the Alhama). The town had a certain strategic value owing to its location on the old road from

Fig. 83. After Joris Hoefnagel, View o f Alhama, Civitates Orbis terrarum (book V, fig. 3).

Granada to Málaga, and in the fifteenth century it was generally regarded as one of the keys to the k i n g d o m of Granada. Indeed, its capture in a famous battle led b y the Marquess of Cádiz in 1482 was the prelude to the conquest of Spain's last Moorish k i n g d o m ten years later. In this view, drawn f r o m a high vantage point located to the northeast, A l h a m a is f r a m e d by the high peaks of the nearby sierra. In s u m m a r y fashion the artist makes reference to its Moorish-style houses, m o s t of which w e r e destroyed in the 1884 earthquake, along w i t h most of the t o w n ' s principal m o n uments. These include portions of its encircling walls, w i t h its towers and old M o o r i s h castle; an aqueduct,

described by A n t o n i o Ponz in his famous Viaje de España (1772-73) as "an aqueduct built over arches that brings water into the city by w a y of the suburb"; and the parish church of Nuestra Señora de la Encarnación (labeled as that of Santa María). Nuestra Señora, one of the three mosques that King Ferdinand converted into churches immediately after Alhama's capture, had a tower of Gothic-mudéjar design and was the last w o r k of the architect Enrique Egas. Outside the city, one can detect several shrines, a guard tower (labeled "torra de guarde") near the f a m o u s springs, together w i t h portions of the t o w n ' s fertile vega, several gardens, and, in the foreground, a pastor w i t h a small flock of sheep. R.L.K.

Alhama de Granada [SOV] Vienna 32b (Pbr over black chalk, 192 x 340 mm).

277

V. 6.

Antequera

W h e n Joris Hoefnagel prepared his w e l l - k n o w n view of Antequera in 1564, he selected a northern vantage point that emphasized the city's location at the foot of the sierra de Málaga. T h e resulting view (Fig. 84) was a dramatic landscape composition in which the city played a subordinate role, wedged between a genre scene in the foreground and, in the background, t o w ering peaks w h o s e scale was purposely distorted for pictorial effect. In contrast, Van den Wyngaerde's view of A n t e quera, w h i c h probably dates f r o m 1567, is dominated b y the city itself. His eastern vantage point provides only a glimpse of the nearby sierra, but allows for a panoramic view of the city's churches, houses, and m o n u m e n t s , together w i t h the corrals, irrigated gardens, and fields in its immediate environs. This concern for topographical accuracy, as opposed to dramatic pictorial composition, is Van den Wyngaerde's trademark and adds considerably to the historical authenticity of this particular view. A M o o r i s h capital conquered by the Infante D o n Fernando in 1410, Antequera for most of the fifteenth century w a s little m o r e than a military outpost on the Granadan frontier. Its inhabitants huddled in the o l d — o r high—city, site of the alcázar, city hall, and collegiate church of Nuestra Señora de la Esperanza (B). This church, one of the m o s t important in A n dalusia, was rebuilt in a Renaissance idiom beginning in 1514, and m a r k e d one of the first departures f r o m the Gothic-mudéjar style of ecclesiastical architecture, w h i c h had theretofore predominated in the region. Its imposing arched facade, completed in 1550, appears in this view w i t h o u t its tower, w h o s e construction began in 1591. Despite the reconstruction of its collegiate church, Antequera's high city, while continuing to serve as an administrative and spiritual center, gradually evolved

278

into an acropolis, somewhat removed f r o m the new heart of the city, w h i c h was n o w situated outside the walls in the suburbs below. Underlying this transformation was a sharp increase in population, which had begun at the end of the fifteenth century, aided by a fertile hinterland and superb communications—the city w a s situated at the intersection of the main roads linking Granada, Málaga, and Seville. T h u s A n t e quera, which had about 2,000 inhabitants under the M o o r s , had g r o w n to nearly 20,000 by the end of the sixteenth century. These n e w inhabitants were housed primarily in the suburbs, most of which were built rapidly w i t h only a m i n i m u m of planning and forethought. Van den Wyngaerde's view of the city emphasizes the extent to w h i c h Antequera had o u t g r o w n its old walls: the sprawling j u m b l e of houses reflects the spirit of the city's spectacular but unrestrained

Fig. 84. After Joris Hoefnagel, View of A n t e q u e r a , Civitatis

fig. 4).

Orbis terrarum

( B o o k II,

J N

W L

Antequera [SOV/F] London 2 ro (Pbr and a little wash, 263 x 860 mm).

Legend:

G.

S t o Cristofel hermito [San Cristóbal, ermita)

B.

Sta M'ria glesia mayior [Santa Maña, iglesia mayor] F. I.

molinos

C,

Los carminios [Carmelitas] H.

St° Augustin D.

S'° Sebastyan

La madre de dios

28o

growth. He also makes reference to those religious establishments that sprang up to accommodate the spiritual needs o f this growing population. Just visible, for example, is the tower o f San Sebastian (H), a four new parishes erected during the sixteenth century. Somewhat more prominent are the church of the Convent o f San Agustin (C), constructed in the 1520s; that o f the Madré de Dios (Augustinian nuns) (D), another sixteenth-century foundation; and San

a monastery founded in 1513. Information about the origins o f Antequera's shrines is somewhat less precise, although Nuestra Señora de Belén (K), La Vera Cruz (A), and San Cristóbal (G) all belong to the first part o f the sixteenth century. Finally, Van den Wyngaerde refers to the source o f Antequera's wealth by indicating the site o f several mills (I). Pérez de Messa noted that the city's rural district contained twenty mills that provided water

Antequera [SS] London 2 V ° Landscape fragment.

Zoilio (E), a Franciscan convent established by the Catholic Monarchs around 1500. San Zoilio stood at the edge o f a new plaza to which it gave its name, and portions o f the convent's original portal, completed in 1507, can still be seen today. Also noteworthy is the three-story belfry o f Nuestra Señora del Carmen (F),

for more than "one hundred irrigated gardens [huertas], 7000 alcanzadas o f vineyards and 500 cahizes o f wheat." The city, consequently, was known to be "rich, fertile, and provisioned with everything," a reputation this view readily confirms. R.L.K.

281

V. 7.

The African Coast

Van den Wyngaerde's first drawings of the coast of N o r t h Africa were those of the siege of Peñón de Vêlez de la Gomera in 1564 (pp. 229-31). Three years later, as part of his effort to situate Gibraltar's dramatic location at the straits, the North African coast again caught his eye. It appears in two of his views of Gibraltar (pp. 287-90); in a small, bird's-eye view of Melilla (p. 284), which had been conquered in 1497 by the Catholic Monarchs; and in this sweeping panorama of the straits f r o m the highlands north of the village of Estepona.

Although "f[ecit] ad vivum," the panorama is actually the product of three more, restricted views that have been pieced together in order to form a view that encompasses nearly 180 degrees. Van den Wyngaerde used this same technique in a number of other drawings, notably that of the Bay of Cadiz (pp. 302-4), but here the effect is particularly dramatic as it includes a profile view of more than 400 kilometers of the African coast, stretching from Oran in the east to Ceuta (D) in the west. The fish-eye view of the Spanish littoral f r o m Torre Blanco (now Punta Cala-

African Coast [F] Vienna 69 (P & W, s/d 1567, 140 x 1354 mm). Anf Vaadm Wyngaerde f . ad vivum 1567 Legend:

T.

Camino para Mal[a]ga

Q. P.

de gubelatar asta la bocca de gualdeano dende la bocca hasta el salto de moros dende el salto asta Stepone ay dende Stepona asta los Bardos dende los Banios asta merneyllia

3 2 1 3 2

leguas leguas legua leguas leguas

O.

La ponte de la torre blanco La tyerra de merneyllia

La hascho[?] de merneyllia

burras) in the west to Punta de Carnero in the east, a distance of approximately seventy-five kilometers, is equally spectacular, although the curvature of the coastline is exaggerated. Van den Wyngaerde orients the viewer with a scale of distance and indications of important landmarks along the coast; among them, the watchtowers erected in the first part of the sixteenth century to provide early warning in the event of corsair attack (F,H,I,M), the fishing villages of Merenilla (P) [Marbella?] and Estepona (R), the fortifications known as

V--

"el salto de Moros" (K—at the Punta Doncella), and Gibraltar itself (A). Also included are the ruins of what are described as "antique Moorish baths" ("los barios de moros, antiguo") and an aqueduct that must have carried fresh water to these baths. In the distance, Algeciras is just visible. Here, in sum, is an early glimpse of the Costa del Sol as it appeared long before the tourists arrived. R.L.K.

Banyos de los mores antiguo R. N.

La Syera Vermeza [Sierra Bermejo] adonde do[n] Alonzo de Agylar hyzo la Batayllia

Ste pone lugar [Estepona]

í'

African Coast [SS] London l l v o (Pbr). Situation sketch of Melilia [Melilla].

E.

B.

Los almynes de totuaen C. D.

Ceuta lugar del Rey de Portugal A. L.

M.

ponte de Carnero

La Syerra Symera K.

La Syerra de Carbonera

La torra de Carbonera

el Salto de Moros

G.

Jubelaltar [Gibraltar]

La pengua de las polombes

La torre vacheros

S. F.

La bocca de gualdeano fguadiaro] que vien de Ronde [Ronda] H.

I.

La torre de Chul[l]era achi

?

La torre de la Ducheza [duquesa]

284

Campo

V.8. Ojén Van den Wyngaerde climbed the Sierra Bermeja in search of a vantage point to record the Straits of Gibraltar (see pp. 282-84). The road leading up from Marbella brought him to this picturesque village, located near the Real River. Ordinarily, Van den Wyngaerde stopped only to prepare views of larger towns; therefore, this view must be considered something of a rarity.

The view of the village includes a small figure working in the fields, as well as others walkmg toward what appears to be a small waterfall. The building to the right is not identified. As the inscription suggests he was accompanied by a merchant from Seville, Don Marco Antonio, perhaps one of the many Genoese traders resident in that city R.L.K.

.7r.tr ^ ( p z i / f f l

tllzrvAu

O j é n [SOV] Vienna 22™ (Pbr, height 158 mm). Small sketch f r o m nature, probably the village of Ojén, north of Marbella. Ochen lugar morisca ohn el don Marco An* mercader in Sybilia co[n] Contratación

285

V.9.

Gibraltar

Van den Wyngaerde's three drawings represent the oldest k n o w n views of the famous "key to Spain" ("llave de España"). O n e drawing, which includes a quickly rendered sketch of Gibraltar as seen f r o m an imaginary vantage point to the east (pp. 287-88, top), is architecturally the most important as it offers a close-up of m o n u m e n t s that have long since disappeared. T h e current residence of the British governor, for example, occupies the site formerly occupied by the C o n v e n t of San Francisco, built in the early part of the sixteenth century. T h e drawing also offers a sketch of the famous shrine of Nuestra Señora de los Remedios, location of the "Virgin of Europe," which was described by López de Ayala in 1582 as a "very famous and often visited image, for w h o m the city has great devotion," and referred to by Van den Wyngaerde as "the end of C h r i s t e n d o m . " Included is a curious sketch of some Moorish baths (baños moriscos) as well as detailed views of Gibraltar's old fortifications, which were built, beginning in the 1530s b y order of Charles V, to defend the city against naval attack, such as the one led by a group of Algerian corsairs in 1540. There is also a sketch of the t o w e r in which the b o d y of D o n Enrique de Guzman, C o u n t of Niebla, was buried. T h e count was famous for his unsuccessful attempt to capture Gibraltar f r o m the M o o r s in 1435, a battle that cost him his life. T h e artist designates the location of this famous battle (O o n pp. 287 and 289) and includes a sketch of the interior of the chapel that housed the count's tomb, labeled "the t o m b in Gibraltar that contains the bones of the C o u n t of Niebla; it is covered in brocade" ("la sepultura donde están en Gibraltar los ossos del conde de Niebla coberto de Brocado"). Primarily a military outpost, or presidio, Gibraltar's economic base was

286

never large, although Van den Wyngaerde indicates the location of some of its gardens (ortos), a lime kiln, and at the water's edge what appears to be a man engaged in the making of cord or rope. Fishing boats can also be seen near a crude pier of stone. A sweeping panoramic view of Gibraltar and, five leagues distant, the African coast was m a d e f r o m life (pp. 289-90); it differs f r o m a smaller drawing (pp. 287-88, bottom) only in minor details. T h e elevated vantage point is imaginary, but the high perspective allows for a glimpse across the Bay of Algeciras and the straits to the Spanish outpost of Ceuta, flanked by the mountain p r o m o n t o r y then k n o w n as La Cymera (L), Abyla, or Ape's Hill—as the t w o apes directly above the hill are meant to suggest. La C y m e r a and the Rock of Gibraltar—Mons Calpe to the Romans— f o r m e d the Pillars of Hercules. T h e rock, which rises to 1,400 feet above sea level, was first fortified by Tarik ibn-Zeyad shortly after the Arabs had invaded Spain in a . d . 711. Portions of this Moorish fortress, labeled "el castillo" (P) in the drawing, still survive today, b u t except for remains of some old gates and baths most of the houses, walls, and other landmarks that constituted the Gibraltar of the sixteenth century no longer exist. War and subsequent construction have obliterated the towers—del Diablo (F), el Tuerto (G), de los Tarifes (N)—that helped to defend the city; the iglesia mayor, formerly a mosque; and various shrines. But the striking natural landmarks, of course, remain: the Caves of Saint Michel (M), located high up the rock; the dramatic vista offered by the Bay of Algeciras; and Gibraltar's strategic port, which even in the sixteenth century was described as "very beautiful and i m p o r t a n t . " R.L.K.

«¡¡¡M-Sì

• : r ' t r

--C

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fi

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J

^

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f

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X Gibraltar [SOV/F] Vienna 65™ (Pbr, s/d 1567, 156 X 851 mm). Ant" Vanden Wyngaerdef. 1567 Legend:

'M

M. F.

torra del diabolo

P.

el Castillo

C.

Cueva de S'° mychel

S'° Joan do Latran

B.

N.

La torre de los tarfos [Tarifes]

La misericordia

D.

S* Fran"*

E.

A.

S mana, glesia magior

G.

nra S™ de Rosario O.

latorra torta [torre tuerto] H.

Ceuta

aqui fuy la bataillia do[nde] don henrico quando se hogo sobra ellia

L.

La Symera [Monte Hacho] I.

cl punto de Carnero

K.

azegires tierra antique [Algeriras]

288

Gibraltar [F] Oxford Large.IV.61 (P & W, signed, 286 x 1103 mm). Ant' Van Den Wyngaerde f . ad vivum Legend:

F.

La torre del Diablo

P.

el Castyllo

Q.

la guardya de dio M. C.

H.

Ceuto [Ceuta]

Cueve de Sto. Mychyl

S'° guan deltran [San Juan de Latrán] B.

La misericordia A.

N.

La torre de los tarfes

S" maria eglyesia mayor

G.

La torre torto

S to francisco

D. E.

nro s ra del Rosario O.

aqui fu la Batalla de don henryco

289

flntVÎ<inTbuïjfA-cr'J, ï '7

L.

La Cymera

I.

el pucnto de Carnero

K.

Azegires [Algeciras]

V.ÍO.

Tarifa

Van den Wyngaerde probably made these drawings of Tarifa, Spain's southernmost town, in 1567, the year he was in the nearby cities of Cádiz and Gibraltar. His view, drawn f r o m an eastern vantage point, also offers a broad panorama of the Sierra de Guadalmasi (K)—also k n o w n as Sierra del Cabrito—part of the Straits of Gibraltar, and a view of the African coast that includes what he describes as the "Cimera m o u n tains where the monkeys are raised" ("sierra de Cimera donde se crian los monos"). In the sixteenth century Tarifa was generally thought to be the ancient Carteya or Tartessos, although this belief was challenged by Ambrosio de Morales, the royal chronicler, w h o claimed that because Tarifa "is on an open beach without any kind of port," it could not possibly have been the site of Carteya. Morales was correct: Tarifa was originally a Phoenician settlement that was later occupied by the Romans. Its name is derived f r o m Tarif ben Malik, leader of the Moorish expeditionary force that invaded Spain in 711. In 1292 the villa was conquered by Sancho IV of Castile, but t w o years later it was the target of a fierce Moorish attack. The t o w n was successfully defended by Alfonso Pérez de Guzmán, el Bueno, regarded as the greatest hero in Tarifa's long history. Van den Wyngaerde sketched a t o m b labeled "the rock where the son of D o n Alonso died" ("la penia [peña] donde murió el hyjo de don alonzo"), a reference to the son w h o m Guzmán el Bueno elected to sacrifice rather than surrender Tarifa to the attacking forces (p. 292). T h e town's principal m o n u m e n t was its fortress, originally constructed by Abd-al-Rahman III in the ninth century; the large towers were added in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Later renamed the Castillo de Guzmán el Bueno, this fortress, along with the town's walls and fortified gates, was still

standing in the eighteenth century; today they are in ruins. As Tarifa was taken f r o m the Moors on the day of San Mateo, its iglesia mayor (A) is dedicated to this saint. Unfortunately, the construction of this church is not well documented, although it appears to have had a single nave covered by an arching barrel vault and a facade of Gothic design. It is said that worship there began in 1534. Far older is Santa María (H), a church built near the castle on a site once occupied by a mosque. In the sixteenth century Tarifa also had a Trinitarian convent (D) and a number of shrines, a m o n g them Santa Catalina, Nuestra Señora del Sol (E), San Roque (F), Santiago (G)—near the castle— and San Telmo (B), which, as indicated by Van den Wyngaerde, was established in 1552. Lacking a suitable anchorage, Tarifa was never able to become an important commercial port, but the t o w n did have a fertile, irrigated huerta (labeled by Van den Wyngaerde "los hortos del Rey") and a small fishing industry, to which the artist alludes by depicting small craft. T h e lack of commercial development, however, did not detract f r o m Tarifa's spectacular location which, then as n o w , offered a view across the straits to N o r t h Africa and, off to the northwest, the broad expanse of beach that extended up to the ruins of the ancient city of Belo and the Cabo de la Plata (B and A on p. 292, top). This beach, as Van den Wyngaerde indicates, was the site of several tuna fisheries (almadrabas), such as the one depicted in his views of Zahara. R.L.K.

291

Tarifa [SS] Vienna 33 vo . Situation sketch of the bay and beach of Tarifa. La playa de taryfo dendo la torre déla guardia asta torejya ay uno legua bueno avia propia para hazer el almadrava [The beach of Tarifa is one league long; it would be a good spot for an almadraba] Legend: E. cabo de sportos F. S to Catalyna

A.

cabo de plata B.

H.

valle de Vache

Bolonia antique C.

cabo de polombo D.

Tarifa [OL] Vienna 64 (Pbl, 170 X 593 mm). Based on Vienna 33 ro .

La torre guarda

! ff B

Tarifa [SOV/F] Vienna 33ro (Pbr, Sq, 155 X 825 mm), el s" paulo flamingo do anveres, constable del Artelyria del Castilio [Senor Pablo, a Fleming from Antwerp, constable of the Castilian artillery] K Legend:

F.

S". Rocho [Roque] M.

D.

p[uerta] xeres E.

nra s™. del sol

La trymdad

cerra gualdamassi

Sto. matheo glesia magior C.

S to . Fran co

G.

S w tago [Santiago]

L

La torra donde chgo el pongual do allonzo

B,

S to Telmo

H

S". mana al medina [?]

O.

terajanos [atarazanas?]

Le**• o ¡fWMUA.f .V f

%

f

'

OrhfTA.

if'»•..,• •..

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I

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|

Q. I.

La oyera do Cimera donde se crian los monos aqui esta la Portaloza del Rey atalantas y herculos la venia destruir

La ponta de la Caletta P.

alcassar cagol [?]

N.

tangera del Rey de portugal

R.

el cabo de Sportos

294

V. i 1.

Zahara de los Atunes

Since the days of the Phoenicians the coasts of Andalusia and the Algarve had been dotted by a series of almadrabas (tuna fisheries) built to profit from the vast schools of tuna that annually came to spawn in the Mediterranean. To avoid the strong currents of the straits, these fish swam close to the shore, where they were trapped in huge nets, dragged into shallow water, killed with harpoons, and then carried ashore to be cut up, salted, and prepared for shipment. The coast between Tarifa and Cádiz contained a number of such installations, of which those at Castilnovo, Conil, and Zahara were the most important. In 1294 these almadrabas were awarded to Guzman el Bueno by Sancho IV; by the sixteenth century they belonged to the dukes of Medina-Sidonia, remembered in the saying "Ir por atún y a ver el duque" ("Let's go there for the tuna and to see the duke"). The heart of Zahara was La Plata, a squat fortress mentioned by Cervantes in the story "La Ilustre Fregona." This castle, vestiges of which still remain, was the center of a sprawling complex of one-story buildings, nearly all of which were covered with defensive vaults; the threat of Moorish corsairs loomed large, especially after their attack in 1557. The fortress served as headquarters for the duke's officials. Nearby stood a variety of worksheds and storehouses, an arsenal and a lonja, and a series of shops and taverns that catered to the fishermen, the duke's guards, and the merchants who came to buy fish. In the shacks known as chancas lived the men who worked in the fisheries. Pedro de León, a Jesuit missionary who visited in 1557, estimated the labor force to exceed 2,000, and he noted that they came from various parts of Andalusia as well as "the remotest places in Castile, Aragón, Catalonia, Portugal, and Galicia." Among them, he adds, were a "large number of adventurers and vagabonds, many of w h o m were criminals, ruffians, and bandits." These fishermen and their "evil women," the Jesuit explained, "lived without law and without a king. They

committed a thousand kinds of outrages and effronteries. There were thefts, murders, obscenities, and other shameful acts, almost beyond remedy." Perhaps the most famous of this insolent band was Cervantes's protagonist Carriazo, who graduated "master of the almadrabas of Zahara," the "essence of the picaro." According to Cervantes, a man could not be rightfully called a picaro until he had "enrolled for two courses in the academy of tuna-fishing." However colorful the picaresque elements may have been, Van den Wyngaerde's view of these installations shows a busy—and successful—business enterprise. The rough sketch (p. 297) provides a detailed enumeration of the various tasks involved and offers a rare close-up of how the fish were actually caught. From the description of Conil and Zahara published by Pérez de Messa in 1590, it is known that as soon as the tuna were first sighted—by a man posted in the atalaya (K on p. 299)—a small flotilla of boats intercepted the tuna and cast a series of nets to entrap the entire school. The heaviest net, la cinta gorda, required at least two hundred men to pull it ashore. At the orders of the official known as "el veedor de la mar," a troop of men marched into the sea carrying "large, spiked iron hooks" or cloques, which they used to catch the heads of the tuna and drag them, still struggling, onto the beach. The work was difficult and dangerous, and Pérez de Messa was particularly fascinated by the sight of "the seawater stained with blood." The tuna were then loaded onto ox-drawn carts and carried to sheds where they were cut up, salted, and hung up to dry. After processing, the fish were packed in barrels and brought by mule train to nearby ports for shipment throughout Spain, Europe, and Africa. An important by-product was the oil collected f r o m the tunas' heads; the rendered tuna oil was used to waterproof ships. Unfortunately, we have no detailed study of the history of Zahara or the other fisheries that belonged to the duke. Pérez de Messa reports that during the

295

main fishing season, May and June, up to 60,000 fish were caught, processed, and sold. In good years, the duke's share o f the profits amounted to between 60,000 and 80,000 ducats. This enormous "river o f money" helped to make the duke Spain's richest grandee. The enormous scale o f this enterprise is well reflected in Van den Wyngaerde's finished view o f Zahara and surrounding shoreline (pp. 298-99)—a drawing far more trustworthy than the romanticized view o f the almadraba o f Hercules, near Cádiz, by Hoefnagel (Fig. 85). For Van den Wyngaerde carefully details every stage o f the operation and the various

Fig. 85. After Joris Hoefnagel, View of the almadraba of Cádiz, Civitates orbis terrarum (book V, fig. 7)

296

types o f workers—botisseros, cabisseros, cargadores, cloqueros, coloneros, remeros, ventureros—who participated in this important but largely forgotten chapter in the history o f Spam's fishing industry. When modern methods o f catching tuna from boats were introduced in the eighteenth century, Andalusia's almadrabas began to steadily decline, and today Zahara is abandoned. In a way, therefore, Van den Wyngaerde's unique drawing serves as a visual complement to Cervantes' "Ilustre Fregona," enabling us to imagine what life in the almadraba must have been like. R.L.K.

czyy}j/idaz

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Jerez de la Frontera [SS] Vienna 22™ T h e countryside southwest of Jerez seen f r o m the city, probably from one of the churches, and inscribed lantscap van xeres— an early use of the term "landscape."

-Vf

y*.: t

Jttrrf

s

nro S r dagia [Nuestra Señora del Guía] frahes St0 augusdn

Salvador

N. G.

S Cristofal monjes

S Lucas O.

M.

Q-

S J o a n do los cavaleros

S mateo el mercado

D ó Luys Ponco do Lyon

P.

monzes d o S augustin d o gracia

!

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Jerez de la Frontera [DS] Vienna 22 ro . Small sketch o f the Plaza del Arenal,

Legend:

D.

S* Mychael

H. I.

E.

nra S " del pilar

F.

el Rastro

Los anelos

A.

G. C.

S t 0 Fran co

Casa dol corigidor

la Caricola dol entrado

K.

Los Villavincensos

La Carrero dol gíoca d o cano B.

porta dol arenael

V. 15.

Sanlúcar de Barrameda

Sanlúcar de Barrameda owes its name, and much of its wealth, to the nearby sand bar at the mouth of the Guadalquivir River. In the sixteenth century this bar made it difficult for ocean-going vessels, particularly the larger ones involved in the Indies trade, to sail up river to Seville, and eventually m o r e and more of these ships loaded and unloaded their cargos at Sanlúcar's port, Zanfanejos, located some distance f r o m the t o w n itself. By the end of the century this port had been renamed Bonanza after a nearby shrine, Nuestra Señora de Bonanza. But bonanza aptly expresses the windfall the riverine traffic brought not only to Sanlúcar but to its lords, the Guzman family, w h o , as dukes of Medina-Sidonia, were Spain's richest grandees. Van den Wyngaerde's view of Sanlúcar is not dated but was probably drawn in 1567. T h e imaginary northern vantage point depicts the t o w n as it appeared to travelers arriving by sea: an older, walled enclave sitting at the crest of a hill and overlooking a newer quarter whose hillside houses reached down to the water's edge. The high t o w n contained Sanlúcar's principal landmarks: the castle of Santiago (D), constructed in the fifteenth century by the Guzmán family and reputedly one of the strongest in the region; the iglesia mayor, a mudejar-style church erected in 1360, with part of an older ruined alcázar as its bell tower (C); and the ducal palace, a sixteenth-century construction described by Agustín de Horozco in 1598 as a house "of poor construction and design, but one of great hospitality." The high t o w n also included the t o w n hall (ayuntamiento), the municipal granary (pósito), and the jail. In contrast, the lower t o w n was the commercial center and in the sixteenth century represented the nexus of the town's growth. As Horozco wrote: "Its growth has been so great that, with the exception of Madrid, the royal court, no other t o w n in Spain comes close to this one, both in terms of charm and

the quality of construction." Horozco was referring principally to the period after 1580, when Sanlucar's population grew to almost 15,000 inhabitants, but Van den Wyngaerde's panorama indicates that this expansion did not begin overnight. The new Sanlucar was symbolized by what Horozco later described as "long and principal streets," a large, open plaza (G) lined with "stalls and workshops" and adorned with a "marble fountain," a series of neatly constructed "palaces and warehouses," and the duke's new customs house (F)—all of which can be discerned in this view. Another facet of the town's expansion was the construction of n e w chapels and convents, notably Santo D o m i n g o de Guzman (A), which was designed by the architect Francisco Rodriguez and still not completed when this drawing was made. San Francisco (B), another newly constructed convent also designed by Rodriguez, was to be abandoned in the seventeenth century when its riverbank location was considered dangerous and unhealthy. T h e date of the construction of San Jorge (K) has not been established, but in the sixteenth century this chapel served Sanlucar's English merchant community, one of several "nations" of foreigners in residence. Sanlucar has changed considerably in recent centuries, and many of the monuments illustrated in this view no longer exist. O n l y ruined portions of the castle remain, and the ducal palace, except for its arcaded facade, has disappeared. The iglesia mayor was rebuilt in the seventeenth century when new towers were added, and many of the small shrines depicted here have been completely transformed. Van den Wyngaerde's view, the earliest known view of Sanlucar, thus affords a unique opportunity to reconstruct the town's topography at a m o m e n t when it first began to enjoy the benefits of the vastly profitable trade with the Indies. R.L.K.

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326

V. 16.

Seville and Triaría

In the sixteenth century Seville was Spain's most populous city, with over 130,000 inhabitants by 1580. Site of the famous Casa de Contratación (House of Trade), the city served as gateway to the N e w World, and through its port came the riches extracted from the silver mines of Mexico and Peru. Such wealth brought to Seville picaros and ruffians of every sort, but also financed the construction of new churches and convents, palaces for the many merchants and nobles who made Seville their home, a new ayuntamiento, and a variety of urban renewal projects, including the reconstruction of the city's gates and the creation of broad avenues, plazas, and streets. As Van den Wyngaerde's sketches indicate, the artist was preparing a finished view of the city. But if it was ever completed, it has yet to be found. One of the preparatory sketches (p. 334) offers a panorama of the city and its surrounding countryside as seen from a western vantage point atop the Castilleja de la Cuesta, a village located five kilometers from the Guadalquivir River, which separates Seville f r o m Triana. At the right is a rough sketch of the Giralda and two of Triana's churches—La Victoria, built in 1516 for the Minims of Saint Francis de Paula, and Nuestra Señora de los Remedios, founded in the 1540s and in the hands of the Descalced Carmelites by 1574. This sketch was used to prepare a panoramic view (pp. 330-32), a historical document of considerable importance in that it is the oldest known representation of Seville's famous suburb. Despite its notorious reputation as a meeting ground for gypsies, picaros, ruffians, and thieves, Triana was also known as an industrial center where large quantities of ceramics, olive oil, and soap were manufactured. The most prominent of its important landmarks was the medieval castle (F) located at the entrance to the suburb, close to the famous bridge of boats (for detail, see p. 333) that marked the limit of Seville's port and the point at which the river was no longer navigable by large seagoing vessels. This

fortress, referred to by one traveler as "a great and formidable stone monument," served as headquarters and prison for the local tribunal of the Inquisition f r o m 1481 until 1626, when a flood badly damaged the building and forced the Holy Office to move. Among Triana's churches, the most important architecturally was Santa Ana, constructed at various stages between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries in a combined Gothic-mwdé/ar style; ruined by the earthquake of 1755, it was completely rebuilt in the second half of the eighteenth century. Also depicted are Nuestra Señora de la Victoria (D) and Nuestra Señora de los Remedios (E), two other sixteenthcentury churches; Espíritu Santo (K), the conventhospital specializing in the care of abandoned infants; the Casas del Mariscal (G), one of many suburban villas built by Sevillian nobles in the sixteenth century; and several other religious buildings, notably the Monastery of San Isidoro del Campo, near Santiponce, site of some important Roman ruins that Van den Wyngaerde sketched in another drawing (p. 335). In the distance are the villages of Gelves (H) and Castilleja (C), and a glimpse of the surrounding countryside. The inscription in the box is curious. Don Pedro de Castiello (probably Castillo or Castrillo) has not been identified, but he was probably among the many conversos arrested by the Inquisition, which was established in Seville in 1484. Evidently Don Pedro's house in Triana and the rest of his property was seized by the Holy Office and sold at auction. A preparatory study done f r o m the Carrión family's house in Triana (pp. 333-34) is one of the most accurate renderings we have of the architecture of sixteenth-century Seville. Hoefnagel's two views (Figs. 89, 90), for example, are unsatisfying on this point. In the foreground, Van den Wyngaerde shows us the bridge of boats (the artist counts thirteen), Seville's only span across the Guadalquivir until the

327

Fig. 89. After Joris Hoefnagel, View of Seville, Civitates orbis terramm {book 4, fig. 2).

nineteenth century, and he indicates the ships (caravels) anchored in the river. O n shore are the outlines o f several warehouses as well as references to dockside activities: oxen and mules pulling heavy carts, stacks o f barrels and merchandise, and men busily working. Portions o f the city's walls, originally built in the twelfth century, are visible at the left, near the Puerta de Goles (later known as the Puerta Real), and to the right, alongside the Puerta del Arenal; but large sections o f the walls on this side o f the city had been removed to make room for warehouses that serviced the port. Far to the right is a quick sketch o f the cathedral and the Giralda, topped by what appears to be a Gothic spire instead o f the bell tower and triumphant figure o f faith (Giraldillo) designed by Hernán Ruiz the Younger and depicted in Joris Hoefnagel's engraving o f 1565 (Fig. 90). The discrepancy between these two views o f the Giralda is difficult to explain. Van den Wyngaerde usually prepared detailed sketches o f important monuments prior to incorporating them into his finished views; his sketch o f the famous Torre del O r o (p. 329) represents a drawing o f this type. It may be, therefore, that Van den Wyngaerde omitted the Giralda's new tower from this preliminary view because he had not yet prepared a detailed sketch o f it. O r perhaps Hoefnagel's drawing was based on plans for a project that had not yet been completed. The remainder o f this view is dominated by Seville's skyline, a changing panorama o f towers, bell towers, and belfries that one architectural historian has described as "heavenly." From left to right, the following buildings are labeled:.

Fig. 90. After Joris Hoefnagel, View of Seville, Civitates orbis terrarttm (book 1, fig. 7).

328

Las Cuivas [Cartuja de Santa María de las Cuevas], This monastery was founded in 1400; its church was first built in 1500 and enlarged soon thereafter. Its gardens and adjacent fields were praised in 1494 by the German traveler Hieronymus Münzer. La Casa de Colonas [Casa de Colón]. Built by Hernando Colón, son o f Christopher Columbus, this

palace was second only to the Casa de Pilatos, built by the Marquess of Tarifa. Under construction by 1525, it was one of numerous palaces erected during the sixteenth century by Seville's cosmopolitan nobility. P. de Gales [Puerta de Goles], O n e of several portals rebuilt in the third quarter of the sixteenth century, this gate was subsequently renamed the Puerta Real, el C a r m e [Santa María de Carmen]. This Carmelite monastery was founded in the thirteenth century; its church was completed in 1603. des mueren gaen Redior [the circuit of the walls that surrounded the city]. beginset do Sera Morena [Here, the Sierra Morena begins]. La Merced [Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes], This old convent had been reconstructed in the early fourteenth century.

mudéjar design was built in the fourteenth century. Its tower was completed between 1593 and 1597. S. Maros [San Marcos], A fourteenth-century mudejar church noted for its high tower, est S. Salvador/S. Catelina [San Salvador, Santa Catalina]. T h e modern church of San Salvador was built in 1671, but there was an older parish with this name. Santa Catalina was a mudejar church, erected in the fourteenth century. S. Franco [San Francisco], Formerly one of the city's largest monasteries, San Francisco incorporated the Colegio de San Buenaventura. Its plaza, built in 1563 by Hernán Ruiz, was the city's largest, [inscription at top] voor Sto. Franco haeft einen hof met seder b o o m e n [in front of San Francisco is a plaza with cedar trees].

Stago [Santiago de la Espada], A fifteenth-century construction by Lorenzo Suárez de Figueroa, Master of Santiago. T h e church was destroyed by fire in 1772; only the apse survives. P. S Juan [Puerta de San Juan]. S. Clara monjas [Convento de Santa Clara]. T h e church of this Franciscan convent dated f r o m the fifteenth century. S. Loréza [San Lorenzo]. A mudejar church dating f r o m the fourteenth century, its facade and tower were added at the end of the fifteenth century. Subsequent restorations have changed its appearance. S. Pariblo [Convento de San Pablo el Real?]. T h e church of this Dominican convent collapsed in 1691 and was totally rebuilt in 1709.

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